Open Lecture on Architecture: Gwyllim Jahn (Fologram)

Making in Mixed Reality: Open Lecture by Fologram co-founder Gwyllim Jahn

The last lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this spring will be Australian architect, RMIT lecturer Gwyllim Jahn, who investigates the implications of Mixed-Reality assembly methodologies on architectural design. Jahn will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 9th of May at 6 pm.

Gwyllim Jahn is the co-founder and CCO of Fologram, a Melbourne based design research practice and technology startup building a platform for designing and making in mixed reality. Gwyllim holds an academic position as a Lecturer in Architecture at RMIT where he developed design research in the fields of mixed reality environments, autonomous robotic fabrication, behavioural design systems and creative applications of machine learning. His work has been published in leading computational design conferences and journals including IJAC, ACADIA and RobArch and he has given talks, presentations and workshops at international institutions including MIT, Stuttgart ICD, UCL, AA, Sci Arc and Tsinghua University.

Jahn is one of the authors of Tallinn Architecture Biennale TAB 2019 Installation Competition winning proposal “Steampunk” – installation will be built in August 2019 in front of the green area facing the Museum of Estonian Architecture.

Fologram practice explores how building directly from mixed reality environments can extend the skills and capabilities of designers and builders by improving spatial understanding of design intent and reducing the risk of human error associated with extrapolating 2D instructions to 3D form. They build tools that dramatically improve the ability of conventional craftsmen and construction teams to fabricate structures with significant variability in parts, form, structure, texture, pattern and so on, and in many cases completely reverse design viability as impossibly expensive and difficult proposals become straightforward, low risk and cheap. Complex designs can now be fabricated on standard building sites, with cheap materials and tools, and without expensive expertise or design documentation.

In his lecture, Jahn will discuss work from Fologram that investigates the implications of Mixed-Reality (MR) assembly methodologies on architectural design. Could making in mixed reality allow us to reconfigure CAD-CAM not as a means of working to high degrees of tolerance and precision but instead as a return to craftsmanship, intuition and reflexive making? How will the medium of MR enable new forms of collaboration between designers and manufactures, or between humans and machines? What new architectural forms might be found in this superposition of the digital and the craftsman?

A brief demonstration of the Fologram toolkit on the HoloLens and mobile devices will follow the presentation.

The architecture and urban design department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has curated the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to everyone.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.
Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali

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