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At Mode Lab, we build on an inspiring foundation of innovation discovered and created by incredible scientists, designers, artists, and architects operating at the confluence of materials, methods, manufacturing, and performance. From an understanding of natural systems, materials, and emerging technologies, to the physical and digital systems that materialize them in unique and unexpected ways, our process is embedded in a deep lineage of computation that amplifies what is creatively possible.
Computation has always been a part of design; the systems required to transform forms, materials, and energy from one state to another have always existed, yet from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, key milestones occurred that allowed us to better explore, uncover, discover, understand, and compute the physical world around us.
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” - Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin writes On the Origin of Species, outlining his theory of natural selection, or as he calls it the “war of nature.” Darwin’s theory outlines the way organisms evolve through natural selection, competing for natural resources and reproduction in order to progress the species. In order to survive, Darwin states, species need to be the fittest in their environment.
“An ‘undrawable’ building in the sense of orthodox representation, the project is a rare if not unique example of holistic design innovation.” - Pia Ednie-Brown, Mark Burry, and Andrew Burrow
Obsessed with natural forms, Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi pioneers techniques in physical computing by creating scale models with chains and weights in order to understand the geometry of building forms that could not be described otherwise. He begins work on La Sagrada Familia by constructing hanging chain models of the cathedral, which translates into the catenary curves of the building’s optimized structure.
“Here is one of the few effective keys to the Design problem: the ability of the Designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible; his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints.” - Charles Eames
Responding to a shortage of sheet metal while in the midst of World War II, artists and architects Charles and Ray Eames experiment with new plywood fabrication techniques, developing a system for cutting, layering, and molding thin wood sheets into functional products. After vast experimentation, including forming wood splints for those injured in battle, the Eameses invent the Kazam! Machine in the living room of their Los Angeles apartment, creating a manufacturing system for forming complex doubly curved surfaces from sheet materials. With this material and manufacturing knowledge, they go on to create some of the most iconic furniture and architecture of modern design.
“The form of an object is a ‘diagram of forces’...that are acting or have acted upon it.” - D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson writes On Growth and Form, grounding his theory that all living things are made of materials, and therefore must follow the laws of physics, geometry and math, just as any non-living thing. Thompson focuses the conversation of evolution on morphology and the relationships between the form of organisms within and across species. This concept goes on to greatly impact architectural design and engineering, specifically in the design of materials and the optimization of form.
“The three-dimensional modules I created had boundaries lacking closure and found completion only when joined by replicas of themselves...multitudes of modules were aligned, much like tiles, adding up to create surfaces that were continuous throughout the entire structure.” - Erwin Hauer
Sculptor Erwin Hauer explores the design and fabrication of continuous volumetric surfaces inspired by biological forms, and creates the first of many expressive screens, titled Design I. Hauer’s sculpture studies a single cast repeatable module as a material system that creates a constantly changing visual experience for the viewer, while also creating fluctuating lighting conditions over time.
The late 1950’s and 1960’s brought a shift in the way designers began to imagine the future, due in large part to a massive technological revolution: 45rpm records, touch-tone phones, the boom of IBM computers, and the creation of BASIC programming language, to name just a few. The advent of these technologies not only enabled the creation of new ideas, but also empowered designers to imagine new worlds.
“I invented a way of enclosing space with what’s called a geodesic dome, which is very much stronger and more efficient than other ways of enclosing space . . . I began to study how big a dome I could build and see whether if you made them bigger, the economics of it began to be unfavorable, and I found in fact that the bigger they got, the more favorable they were... if you just had the covering over there, you’d reduce heat losses in New York 80 times.” - R. Buckminster Fuller
A highly eccentric and imaginative inventor and designer, Buckminster Fuller dedicates his life’s work to solving complex problems of humanity. He designs the Manhattan Dome, inspired by bubbles and other natural forms and defined by the principles of his geodesic domes, as a lightweight, easy-to-assemble dome that can create a more sustainable Manhattan.
“We are in pursuit of an idea, a new vernacular, something to stand alongside the space capsules, computers and throw-away packages of an atomic/ electronic age.” - Warren Chalk
A radical group of young architects in London called Archigram, inspired by the culture and emerging technologies of the 1960’s and the work of Buckminster Fuller, design Plug-In City, a proposal for an urban infrastructural system where people plug in their capsules and thrive in a new notion of what it means to live, gather, and congregate in the city. Archigram’s reimagination of what the city could be is both inspired by and the impetus to the future of design in a world where technology is all around us.
“Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers or at least terminals connected to a central computer automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment.” - Gordon Moore
While working at Fairchild Semiconductor, and prior to his founding of Intel, Gordon Moore publishes a short paper on the current state of the integrated-circuit market, predicting that the complexity of computer chips (and therefore computing power) will double every year. This ultimately correct prediction means that technology can advance at an exponential rate.
“Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers or at least terminals connected to a central computer automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment.” - Gordon Moore
As one of the first Process artists, Barry Le Va creates Equal Quantities: Placed or Dropped In, Out, and On in Relation to Specific Boundaries, a piece exploring the emergent outcomes of interactions between materials, the body, and the environment.
“The knowledge of the conditions under which forms develop opens up the possibility to qualify step by step the differentiation between design -- the anticipation of reality in mind -- and the construction of buildings -- the production of objects.” - Siegfried Gass
Architect and engineer Frei Otto designs and builds the Munich Olympic Stadium, featuring a highly technical cable-net roof structure designed through a technique he calls “form-finding”, or the process of using materials that self-organize under specific loading conditions. Materializing the principles laid out by D’Arcy Thompson in the 1940’s, Otto physically works with materials that compute their form based on environmental, structural, and spatial conditions.
“Stop thinking about art works as objects and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." - Brian Eno
After massive success with the band Roxy Music, Brian Eno, releases Music for Airports, defining the genre of ambient music. The record is driven by the desire to construct an experience of a specific environment through the systematic control of sound. With the integration of traditional instruments and synthesizers, along with looping techniques, Eno creates a computational concept for music that defines affect and effect.
The last 30 years or so have seen dramatic changes in computational design, specifically with the development of digital technologies and digital design tools. With new ways of working, designing, and making, the notion of physical and digital materials began to coexist in completely novel ways.
“Imaginative use...means using the computer...to compress evolutionary space and time so that complexity and emergent architectural form are able to develop. The computers of our imagination are also a source of inspiration - an electronic muse." - John Frazer
Where Frei Otto focuses on natural systems as models for physical computing, John Frazer, an architect and educator, pioneers the concept that digital design processes can emulate natural processes by incorporating concepts of evolution. To Frazer, the power of computation allows designers to compress millions of years of evolution into minutes, driving the creation of new forms and performance characteristics.
“The design allows for an endless number of variations within a family of recognizable siblings. Designing the one and the many is done all at once and without recourse to an ideal and a finite number of variations...This technique engages the need for any globally marketed product to have brand identity and variation - both novelty and familiarity.” - Greg Lynn
Greg Lynn explores design and fabrication as experiments in technology, using CAD tools such as Microstation and Maya to computationally design and fabricate a series of houses each with individual, yet similar components and a clearly defined set of fabrication instructions. The development of the houses’ global forms are a direct result of of the surface topology of the digital models, creating an integrated relationship between digital and physical form.
“When code is seen as a general way of thinking that can apply to many areas of activity, the instruction also transforms, as does the context. Code is a new language, and when a language is taught we need something to talk about. Will we talk about math, architecture, or economics with code? Will we talk about biology, painting, or statistics? When we think about code in a general way, we can move past the technical domains to enter into the domains of culture and the humanities.” - Casey Reas
Processing, a free and open-source scripting platform, is released by Ben Fry and Casey Reas as a way to make coding accessible to those without coding backgrounds. The democratization of coding as a computational design method, via Processing, enables designers to explore spaces and ideas that were previously unimaginable, and provides the community an opportunity to share code and develop software collaboratively.
“It seems that everybody tries to define the digital twin in very prescriptive terms, but I refuse to do that. For instance, I propose that it does not require a physical asset...” - John Vickers
NASA principal technologist coins the term “digital twin” referring to virtual models of products and processes that are either physical or digital in reality. This new model for design puts computation directly at the center of the process, where the simulation of the real is comparable to the real itself. Digital twins become a critical component of the automotive studio pipeline, as well as in the collaboration between humans, computers, and machines on the factory floor.
No computer on earth can match the processing power of even the most simple natural system, be it of water molecules on a warm rock, a rudimentary enzyme system, or the movement of leaves in the wind. The most powerful and challenging use of the computer...is in learning how to make a simple organization (the computer) model what is intrinsic about a more complex, infinitely entailed organization (the natural or real system). - Sanford Kwinter
At Mode Lab, we build on an inspiring foundation of innovation discovered and created by incredible scientists, designers, artists, and architects operating at the confluence of materials, methods, manufacturing, and performance. From an understanding of natural systems, materials, and emerging technologies, to the physical and digital systems that materialize them in unique and unexpected ways, our process is embedded in a deep lineage of computation that amplifies what is creatively possible.
Computation has always been a part of design; the systems required to transform forms, materials, and energy from one state to another have always existed, yet from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, key milestones occurred that allowed us to better explore, uncover, discover, understand, and compute the physical world around us.
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” - Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin writes On the Origin of Species, outlining his theory of natural selection, or as he calls it the “war of nature.” Darwin’s theory outlines the way organisms evolve through natural selection, competing for natural resources and reproduction in order to progress the species. In order to survive, Darwin states, species need to be the fittest in their environment.
“An ‘undrawable’ building in the sense of orthodox representation, the project is a rare if not unique example of holistic design innovation.” - Pia Ednie-Brown, Mark Burry, and Andrew Burrow
Obsessed with natural forms, Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi pioneers techniques in physical computing by creating scale models with chains and weights in order to understand the geometry of building forms that could not be described otherwise. He begins work on La Sagrada Familia by constructing hanging chain models of the cathedral, which translates into the catenary curves of the building’s optimized structure.
“Here is one of the few effective keys to the Design problem: the ability of the Designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible; his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints.” - Charles Eames
Responding to a shortage of sheet metal while in the midst of World War II, artists and architects Charles and Ray Eames experiment with new plywood fabrication techniques, developing a system for cutting, layering, and molding thin wood sheets into functional products. After vast experimentation, including forming wood splints for those injured in battle, the Eameses invent the Kazam! Machine in the living room of their Los Angeles apartment, creating a manufacturing system for forming complex doubly curved surfaces from sheet materials. With this material and manufacturing knowledge, they go on to create some of the most iconic furniture and architecture of modern design.
“The form of an object is a ‘diagram of forces’...that are acting or have acted upon it.” - D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson writes On Growth and Form, grounding his theory that all living things are made of materials, and therefore must follow the laws of physics, geometry and math, just as any non-living thing. Thompson focuses the conversation of evolution on morphology and the relationships between the form of organisms within and across species. This concept goes on to greatly impact architectural design and engineering, specifically in the design of materials and the optimization of form.
“The form of an object is a ‘diagram of forces’...that are acting or have acted upon it.” - D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson writes On Growth and Form, grounding his theory that all living things are made of materials, and therefore must follow the laws of physics, geometry and math, just as any non-living thing. Thompson focuses the conversation of evolution on morphology and the relationships between the form of organisms within and across species. This concept goes on to greatly impact architectural design and engineering, specifically in the design of materials and the optimization of form.
The late 1950’s and 1960’s brought a shift in the way designers began to imagine the future, due in large part to a massive technological revolution: 45rpm records, touch-tone phones, the boom of IBM computers, and the creation of BASIC programming language, to name just a few. The advent of these technologies not only enabled the creation of new ideas, but also empowered designers to imagine new worlds.
“I invented a way of enclosing space with what’s called a geodesic dome, which is very much stronger and more efficient than other ways of enclosing space . . . I began to study how big a dome I could build and see whether if you made them bigger, the economics of it began to be unfavorable, and I found in fact that the bigger they got, the more favorable they were... if you just had the covering over there, you’d reduce heat losses in New York 80 times.” - R. Buckminster Fuller
A highly eccentric and imaginative inventor and designer, Buckminster Fuller dedicates his life’s work to solving complex problems of humanity. He designs the Manhattan Dome, inspired by bubbles and other natural forms and defined by the principles of his geodesic domes, as a lightweight, easy-to-assemble dome that can create a more sustainable Manhattan.
“We are in pursuit of an idea, a new vernacular, something to stand alongside the space capsules, computers and throw-away packages of an atomic/ electronic age.” - Warren Chalk
A radical group of young architects in London called Archigram, inspired by the culture and emerging technologies of the 1960’s and the work of Buckminster Fuller, design Plug-In City, a proposal for an urban infrastructural system where people plug in their capsules and thrive in a new notion of what it means to live, gather, and congregate in the city. Archigram’s reimagination of what the city could be is both inspired by and the impetus to the future of design in a world where technology is all around us.
“Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers or at least terminals connected to a central computer automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment.” - Gordon Moore
While working at Fairchild Semiconductor, and prior to his founding of Intel, Gordon Moore publishes a short paper on the current state of the integrated-circuit market, predicting that the complexity of computer chips (and therefore computing power) will double every year. This ultimately correct prediction means that technology can advance at an exponential rate.
“Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers or at least terminals connected to a central computer automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment.” - Gordon Moore
As one of the first Process artists, Barry Le Va creates Equal Quantities: Placed or Dropped In, Out, and On in Relation to Specific Boundaries, a piece exploring the emergent outcomes of interactions between materials, the body, and the environment.
“The knowledge of the conditions under which forms develop opens up the possibility to qualify step by step the differentiation between design -- the anticipation of reality in mind -- and the construction of buildings -- the production of objects.” - Siegfried Gass
Architect and engineer Frei Otto designs and builds the Munich Olympic Stadium, featuring a highly technical cable-net roof structure designed through a technique he calls “form-finding”, or the process of using materials that self-organize under specific loading conditions. Materializing the principles laid out by D’Arcy Thompson in the 1940’s, Otto physically works with materials that compute their form based on environmental, structural, and spatial conditions.
“Stop thinking about art works as objects and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." - Brian Eno
After massive success with the band Roxy Music, Brian Eno, releases Music for Airports, defining the genre of ambient music. The record is driven by the desire to construct an experience of a specific environment through the systematic control of sound. With the integration of traditional instruments and synthesizers, along with looping techniques, Eno creates a computational concept for music that defines affect and effect.
The last 30 years or so have seen dramatic changes in computational design, specifically with the development of digital technologies and digital design tools. With new ways of working, designing, and making, the notion of physical and digital materials began to coexist in completely novel ways.
“Imaginative use...means using the computer...to compress evolutionary space and time so that complexity and emergent architectural form are able to develop. The computers of our imagination are also a source of inspiration - an electronic muse." - John Frazer
Where Frei Otto focuses on natural systems as models for physical computing, John Frazer, an architect and educator, pioneers the concept that digital design processes can emulate natural processes by incorporating concepts of evolution. To Frazer, the power of computation allows designers to compress millions of years of evolution into minutes, driving the creation of new forms and performance characteristics.
“The design allows for an endless number of variations within a family of recognizable siblings. Designing the one and the many is done all at once and without recourse to an ideal and a finite number of variations...This technique engages the need for any globally marketed product to have brand identity and variation - both novelty and familiarity.” - Greg Lynn
Greg Lynn explores design and fabrication as experiments in technology, using CAD tools such as Microstation and Maya to computationally design and fabricate a series of houses each with individual, yet similar components and a clearly defined set of fabrication instructions. The development of the houses’ global forms are a direct result of of the surface topology of the digital models, creating an integrated relationship between digital and physical form.
“When code is seen as a general way of thinking that can apply to many areas of activity, the instruction also transforms, as does the context. Code is a new language, and when a language is taught we need something to talk about. Will we talk about math, architecture, or economics with code? Will we talk about biology, painting, or statistics? When we think about code in a general way, we can move past the technical domains to enter into the domains of culture and the humanities.” - Casey Reas
Processing, a free and open-source scripting platform, is released by Ben Fry and Casey Reas as a way to make coding accessible to those without coding backgrounds. The democratization of coding as a computational design method, via Processing, enables designers to explore spaces and ideas that were previously unimaginable, and provides the community an opportunity to share code and develop software collaboratively.
“It seems that everybody tries to define the digital twin in very prescriptive terms, but I refuse to do that. For instance, I propose that it does not require a physical asset...” - John Vickers
NASA principal technologist coins the term “digital twin” referring to virtual models of products and processes that are either physical or digital in reality. This new model for design puts computation directly at the center of the process, where the simulation of the real is comparable to the real itself. Digital twins become a critical component of the automotive studio pipeline, as well as in the collaboration between humans, computers, and machines on the factory floor.
No computer on earth can match the processing power of even the most simple natural system, be it of water molecules on a warm rock, a rudimentary enzyme system, or the movement of leaves in the wind. The most powerful and challenging use of the computer...is in learning how to make a simple organization (the computer) model what is intrinsic about a more complex, infinitely entailed organization (the natural or real system). - Sanford Kwinter
