unschooling studio
Leveraging large language models and cross laminated timber to challenge the SINSW school construction template.
This studio project involved critique of a state government construction template, and the development of policy and construction solutions to the sector’s challenges.
Any framework for creating new schools must be resistant to funding neglect, acceptable of retrofits for new purposes, embrace natural weathering and resist man-made shocks to climatic conditions. The construction template currently employed by State Infrastructure for New South Wales does not adequately address these challenges.
A two part system was formulated to replace this template, including a community-engagement policy framework and a kit-of-parts construction system.
A two part system was formulated to replace this template, including a community-engagement policy framework and a kit-of-parts construction system.
School Bot
A public platform that consolidates lessons learned from multiple school projects into a central live database.
Watch School Bot in action below ︎︎︎
Watch School Bot in action below ︎︎︎
School Bot is a community-engagement framework that uses large language models to create a pre-/post-occupancy feedback loop, encouraging community ownership by creating moments for listening that have previously been neglected by the construction process.
It normally takes many hours for a human to analyze the verbal or written opinion data gathered during community consultation. School Bot utilises the Microsoft Azure AI model to consolidate all opinions gathered from local communities through semi-structured interviews, and synthesizes them in real time.
This allows architects to build models of community opinions that SINSW can apply across projects, learning from past community feedback at different stages of school projects.
It normally takes many hours for a human to analyze the verbal or written opinion data gathered during community consultation. School Bot utilises the Microsoft Azure AI model to consolidate all opinions gathered from local communities through semi-structured interviews, and synthesizes them in real time.
This allows architects to build models of community opinions that SINSW can apply across projects, learning from past community feedback at different stages of school projects.
Hi-Tech CLT
Cross-laminated timber and Hi-Tech construction logic can create structures that provide democratic access to the retrofit and services of a building.
The physical construction system response seeks to address the inadequacies of the existing kit-of-parts template, rather than to proscribe a set system. To do this it targets the fixed and mediocre spans achieved by the current template, and plays with the location of services in order to support future maintenance.
An in-depth study of the Centre Pompidou and other Philip Johnson buildings was utilised to study alternative joining logics to the cross-laminated timber systems currently used by the SINSW template.
These logics were used to achieve a larger span capacity and to exclude core risers, enabling greater flexibility of internal planning - a goal of the structural system emplyed at Pompidou. Creating structural zones without program on the exterior allows protected for exposed vertically-running services, allowing for easy maintenance and reconfiguring in future.
The result is a system that local builders and fabricators can easily maintain, and whose inhabitants can configure spaces within it in a myriad number of ways.
This empowers a program of community maintenance, an approach more sustainable than the current one of centralized fleet maintenance.
An in-depth study of the Centre Pompidou and other Philip Johnson buildings was utilised to study alternative joining logics to the cross-laminated timber systems currently used by the SINSW template.
These logics were used to achieve a larger span capacity and to exclude core risers, enabling greater flexibility of internal planning - a goal of the structural system emplyed at Pompidou. Creating structural zones without program on the exterior allows protected for exposed vertically-running services, allowing for easy maintenance and reconfiguring in future.
The result is a system that local builders and fabricators can easily maintain, and whose inhabitants can configure spaces within it in a myriad number of ways.
This empowers a program of community maintenance, an approach more sustainable than the current one of centralized fleet maintenance.