D2RP for Bio-Cyber-Physical Planetoids

Year: 2020-2021
Project leader LA: Pierre Oskam
Project team LA: Pierre Oskam
Project leader RB: Henriette Bier
Project team RB: Henriette Bier, Arwin Hidding, Max Latour, Vera Laszlo and MSc students
Collaborators / Partners:  UniFri (Hamed Alavi and Denis Lalanne), Tokencube (Klaus Starnberger), 3D Robot Printing/Dutch Growth Factory (Arwin Hidding, Jasper Menger, and Rene Ritmeijer)
Funding: 10K from Creative Industries Fund NL
Dissemination: DDW 2020

This project is a collaboration between Landscape Architecture (LA) and Robotic Building (RB) at TU Delft. It implements minimum interventions that stimulate both biodiversity and social: accessibility of places in the long term. These interventions are large enough to relate to architectural scale and partly made from materials found on site. This project aims to make interventions that help existing life on the spot, encouraging autonomous development in particular with respect to biodiversity, water retention and accessibility.

By researching a number of unique microclimates typical of ruins and intermediate areas, habitats can be developed for various animal and plant species. From an eco-philosophical point of view, all living beings are treated as equal social actors. The design relies on a multispecies urbanism in which artefacts are modelled by means of parametric design and robotically 3D printed and/or milled. This approach relies on Design-to-Robotic-Production (D2RP) techniques. Materials and techniques considered are wood, bioplastic from coffee and bamboo waste.

The interventions take shape in form of 0.5-1-meter diameter ‘planetoids’ placed on different locations where all living things are treated as social actors . They support the life that is already existing at the location and they also initiate new life. The ’planetoids’ are prototyped using Design-to-Robotic-Production and -Operation (D2RP&O) techniques . D2RP is implemented in this project by means of parametric design and robotic production and operation involving 3D printing and/or milling. Materials considered are wood and bioplastic from wood, coffee, and bamboo waste. Furthermore, D2RO techniques are implemented for the sensor-actuator systems integrated in order to track microclimates within and around the ‘planetoids’. Multiple plants grow from a single ‘planetoid’.