X-Form 1.0

BACKGROUND: ‘X-Form 1.0’ is an installation that relates to the fields of architectural structural design and construction through the generative design technique Bi-directional Evolutionary Structural Optimization (BESO) and the application of robotic fabrication to produce efficient and elegant spatial structures. BESO enables a structural increase in efficiency but the complex forms it produces typically create construction inefficiencies. The project addressed the question of how integration of BESO and additive manufacturing may enable the efficiencies of BESO to be realised within built form, and enable the creation of innovative, efficient and organic architectural forms that facilitate the realisation of mass customization in the construction industry. CONTRIBUTION: Contributing to the fields of generative design, robotic fabrication and mass customisation, ‘X-Form 1.0’ is an architectural installation that combines topology optimization-based form-finding and large-scale robotic 3D printing. This research establishes a design and fabrication process involving a collaboration between architecture and engineering research groups through the creation of a full-scale prototype of a topologically optimized spatial structure. This project contributes to a series of projects undertaken by the team that explores the design implications of 3D printed structures. These technologies have the potential to be widely applied to the mass customisation and manufacturing in the building industry. SIGNIFICANCE: ‘X-Form 1.0’ was publicly exhibited at Architectural Intelligence: the 9th Digital FUTURES International 2019 Summer Workshop and Exhibition (Jun-Oct 2019). The exhibition was co-curated by Mark Burry (Swinburne), Philip Yuan and Neil Leach (Tongji University). It was subsequently featured in the journal ‘Time & Architecture' journal (2019) and the book ‘Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication’ (2020, Springer and Tongji).