Exercises in Style

Abstract

Exercises in Style was written by the French author Raymond Queneau in 1947. The book provides 99 versions of the same story: each version follows a specific literary style, which is categorized under terms such as “precision”, “animism”, and “mathematical”. The ideas exchanged in this discussion defined a framework for a set of experiments examining the possibility of integrating concepts and methods from both architecture and neuroscience into a fabrication method that shared a single platform—a robotic arm. In the last decade, as the use of industrial robotic arms in the field of architecture has increased, the focus has shifted from the automation of construction to design exploration. In order to integrate design and fabrication with real-time sensing, the toolkit needs to communicate between the sensor and the robot. While the robot is the moving platform, the sensor is situated on the tool, so that the sensor can mediate material and environmental sensations back to the robotic arm.