The Delft Prototype Laboratory

The Prototype Laboratory initiated and maintained by the Chair of Product Development at the Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft, has set an example in architectural education for hands-on ‘learning-by-making’ for students. According to the authors of this book, in the current curriculums time spent on practical work is not rewarded and students are educated in an abstract concept of architecture, not getting a proper feeling for materialization. A semester of designing, engineering, producing and building a prototype with their own hands after their own design often gives students a boost in their education. The Delft Prototype laboratory was the base of around 1,000 students, now professionals. Some architect’s offices make prototypes regularly as their designs are quite experimental and require more insight for the designing architect, before the realization of his building. Prototypes of technical components are often developed parallel to the building process. The Prototype Laboratory at the Faculty of Architecture was supervised for almost 18 years by Peter van Swieten. He describes his experiences in this book, in collaboration with the initiator, professor Mick Eekhout. Marcel Bilow took over the Bucky Lab, as it is called, from 2012 onwards.

The Delft Prototype is a single apartment from a not yet realized Concept House Urban Villa, which consists of 16 apartments on 4 floors. Both the urban villa and the prototype demonstrate the characteristics of high level industrial production with an extremely low ecological footprint, as well as being energy-positive in use, and both are suitable for multi-storey housing. The research, development, production and built prototype resulted in a unique innovation on the Dutch building market: a sustainable energy-positive apartment system for medium-rise energy-positive housing. This scientific report deals with the history, development and realization process of the prototype up to the completion of the building phase, after which the prototype was furnished and the garden landscaped, culminating with the opening of the prototype in October 2012. The development was initiated by Mick Eekhout’s Chair of Product Development at the TU Delft at the specific request of the building industry and was carried out in close collaboration with a consortium of partners from the SME building supply industry. Innovation continues to progress in these partner industries. The entire project was externally financed for the 8 years of its duration. Apart from initiative and natural project leadership, the innovative contribution of the Chair included the design, coordination and integration of the many components into the single coherent entity of the Concept House ‘Delft’ Prototype.

Buildings are neither conceived nor realized by architects in a vacuum; the architect forms part of a larger team of builders, craftsmen, engineers and other experts who join forces to bring together their diverse fields of knowledge. This book describes the design and development of the building process for the wings at the Yitzhak Rabin Centre in Tel Aviv, and demonstrates how collaborative building, technical design and development can lead in an integrated and innovative, but risky process to an extreme innovation, an Octatube ‘Moonshot’. The challenge posed by the Rabin Centre wings was to develop an entirely novel technology for constructing free form shells. It is necessary for many disciplines to collaborate in such a process, and these must be coordinated throughout the entire process, including all of its unforeseen and experimental stages. The results of the process then have to be integrated into one technical artifact that satisfies all requirements and delivers effective answers or compromises in all of its life phases, be that conceptual design, material design, detail design, engineering, production, assembly, installation, loading behavior, functional use as a building, meaning of the building as an artifact (even as architecture) and, in both its local and global context, in its meaning as an integral part of the building.

Lists citations with abstracts for aerospace related reports obtained from world wide sources and announces documents that have recently been entered into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Database.

Paper and cardboard as sustainable building materials are currently the subject of research and testing. They can be produced inexpensively, are made from renewable raw materials and are completely recyclable. The focus of their application is on temporary uses, such as for transitional schools, emergency shelters or "microhomes". Properly protected from moisture and fire, the material proves to be durable. Design and aesthetic qualities are by no means neglected, as case studies by Pritzker Prize winner Shigeru Ban demonstrate: the Chengdu Elementary School, the Paper Concert Hall in Aquila or the Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch all provided a sign of hope after devastating earthquakes. This introduction explains the technology of building with cardboard and paper and shows a wide range of examples.

Current systems design and decision management methodologies can be single-sided, ignoring or failing to capture the dynamic interplay between multi-stakeholder preferences (‘what they want’) and system performances (‘what they can’). In addition, these methodologies often contain fundamental modelling errors and do not provide single best-fit solutions. This leaves designers or decision-makers without unique answers to their problems. Above all, mainstream higher education primarily applies instructivist and research-based learning methods, and therefore does not adequately prepare students for designing solutions to future complex problems. This book introduces both a state-of-the-art participatory design methodology (Odesys), and a design-based learning concept (ODL), which together overcome the aforementioned issues. Odesys is a pure act of open design integration to confront conflicting socio-technical interests and is the key to unlocking these complexities to deliver socially responsible systems. Odesys’ design engine, the Preferendus, enables stakeholders to cooperatively identify their best-fit design synthesis. It employs a novel optimisation method that maximises the aggregated preferences, integrating sound mathematical and extended U-modelling via open technical-, social-, and purpose cycles. The art of ODL is a constructivist design-based and well-proven learning concept fostering students’ design capabilities to become open and persistent problem solvers. It is a reflective, creative, and engaged learning approach that opens human development and unlocks new knowledge and solutions. The author also introduces new management features such as the corporate social identifier (CSI), the ‘socio-eco’ threefold organization model and U-model based open loop management. Finally, the author places Odesys & ODL within the integrative context of empiricism, rationalism, spiritualism, and constructivism to unite the open design impulse. This book will be of interest to both academics and practitioners working in the field of complex systems design and managerial decision-making, and functions as a textbook on systems design and management for master students from diverse backgrounds. Prof.dr.ir. A.R.M. (Rogier) Wolfert has worked with R&D groups at various (inter)national universities and research institutes for the past 30 years. Since 2013, he has been professor of engineering asset management at Delft University of Technology. Over the past 20 years, he has also established a proven industrial track-record in which he has been involved in the design and management of various types of infrastructure. He considers both the ‘outer’ observation and the ‘inner’ experience as companions on his journey into the emerging future.

The annually released proceedings of the UK's Ergonomics Society annual conference. This book continues the long association between Taylor & Francis and the Ergonomics Society.

Composites are a class of material, which receives much attention not only because it is on the cutting edge of active material research fields due to appearance of many new types of composites, e.g., nanocomposites and bio-medical composites, but also because there are a great deal of promises for their potential applications in various industries ranging from aerospace to construction due to their various outstanding properties. This book mainly deals with fabrication and property characterization of various composites by focusing on the following topics: functional and structural nanocomposites, numerical and theoretical modelling of various damages in long fiber reinforced composites and textile composites, design, processing and manufacturing technologies and their effects on mechanical properties of composites, characterization of mechanical and physical properties of various composites, and metal and ceramic matrix composites. This book has been divided into five sections to cover the above contents.