For my first post on openp2pdesign.org, I decided to announce you an event I’m organizing together with Dr. Teresa Baptista (Advisor of the Zoological Museum) and Prof. José Fernando Gonçalves (CEARQ Coordinator), the third edition of Arquibio (June 14-18, Coimbra, Portugal).
Arquibio is jointly organized by the Zoological Museum, University of Coimbra, Center for the Study of Architecture, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Coimbra (CEARQ) and collaborators linked to several European and American universities.
Even though it’s not a project born directly from openp2pdesign.org, we decided to put in our projects page as it fits with the Design for Complex Systems issue (and in this case, it’s about designing Complex Architectures learning from Complex Natural Systems).

Arquibio 2010 is a series of international lectures and workshops on topics connecting architecture and design with the “bio-logics”. It is intended that the lecturers and visiting scholars allow a consistent connection between current biological and architectural knowledge bringing light of recent technological advances.

The premise is that the fusion between biological and technological world is now a reality that cannot be ignored. Computers and robotics prove to be capable of releasing the architects and designers of a catalog architecture, based on still images, teaching us new fields of interaction in which complex processes similar to those that occur in nature, take center stage and allow a more consistent connection with the living environment.

The event consists of lectures and three workshops:

1. Bio-Modeling
   Introduction to develop biomorphic models using advance modeling software.
2. Bio-Parametrics
   Advance modeling and explicit programing of parametric and generative models. Production of design and architectonic genotypes.
3. Bio-Machining
   Processes of materialization with CNC machines, relating robotics with architecture and bionic design. Production of phenotypes or physical models.

The aim of its workshops is to study and practice how the complex scientific concepts provided by the observation of biological processes may be connected to architecture professional practice by the creative use of digital technologies. Rhino, Grasshopperand RhinoCAM will be the software used during the workshops.

You can still register for it and attend the workshops and the conference here.

See you there!

After FluidForms (read this old post), here is another innovative Swiss company based on mass-customization and user co-created content, mShape.
And they use too multi-layered wood and computer controlled milling machines, but here complexity comes from the behaviour of the users, from their co-creation that generates “a population of tables”.

It’s not an open p2p marketplace, it’s not a peer production example, but it is a very good example of user co-created design. You can’t buy other users’ tables, so it’s not a marketplace and relationships between users are not fostered (nor they are interested in them). Therefore, it’s not a community but a co-creation business/service.
Actually, you can buy an mShape table in two showrooms in Zurich, where:

Our partners can provide you with a Nokia mobile phone for the time of your design

So the most important thing of mShape is that it works using mobile techologies i.e. easy of use tecnologies that have a wide reach. Just note that every project that is strongly based on user participation needs an enabler designer rather than a conventional one, a designer capable of developing a meta-design project where the user will be the conventional designer.
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