QUALITATIVE ROBOTICS
Huggable Architecture is an exhibit produced as part of the Design Innovation Fellowship at Ball State University. The exhibit interrogates how we might mediate between the quantitative and qualitative aspects of design by drawing on ideas of softness, empathy, warmth, and the body. It takes an opportunistic approach to design research and tries to find the equilibrium between computational control and material volition by bringing together a change of state material with a digitally controlled and automated flexible mold. Securing 1,150 pounds of gypsum cement—one of the most commonly used building materials today—an unconventional approach to its use was derived for freezing geometric variations. The sea of individual soft, dense, and pure casts that result taxonomize the range of curvature achieved through the reusable parametric mold.
Project Team: Morganne Walker and Kaiyah Dickey