and one on the possibility that robotic technologies bring to architecture and to the construction sector. The discussion will take place at the end of the three papers. So the fifth paper is presented by Giacomo Balla and his title is Ray Nine Square Grid

Fragmented Parts and Unified Wall. It is a work developed in the context of a PhD and just a position of the nine square grid and fragmentation in a kind of coherent whole. Combining the grid and fragmentation method, the work tried to reconcile the need for an

internal formal logic and fragmentation as a form or formal complexity. Giacomo Balla comes from the University of Innsbruck Institute of Urban Design and he is a PhD candidate studying under the guidance of Peter Trammer.

He is conducting a research about formalism and its relation to narrative and time using as a departure point Piranese's work.

Okay, please, Giacomo. Okay, first of all, thank you for selecting my paper, of course, and to give me the opportunity to, let's say, present some work I've been doing for my PhD. Even though this is really the early stage, I wouldn't even call it as a project or anything, it's more or less a series of drawings have been made.

But before starting, I would really like to, let's say, say something in order to avoid any possible, let's say, misunderstanding in the sense that what I'm working on as a formal method, it's more related to the notion of, let's say, composition in architecture,

so in a more, let's say, classical way if you want, even though maybe through some digital tools, but that's not even important by now, which is to say that what I'm working on with Peter Trummer and others is that, let's say, the idea that architecture is something that

is way beyond problem related to performance and optimization and those kind of things, which is at the end of the day the problem of the parts to whole relationship that somehow frames, if we want, all the history of architecture. In this sense, I've changed a bit the presentation in relation to the paper because recently,

a few days ago, last week, Mario Carpo published this paper in which he's discussing and criticizing the idea of the post-digital architecture, as he calls it, that is to say the comeback

of infection of the post-modern and collage and all to say. What is criticizing is the idea that these kind of new tendencies that are really fashionable according to him are not producing a novelty. In this sense, I would like to somehow challenge, ideally and in modesty, Carpo, in the sense

that his idea somehow presupposes a general understanding of the discipline of architecture as a linear evolution that goes, let's say, talking about modernity from Alberti up to today in which each architect through generation, every new generation of architects is inventing new formal methods in order to implement the discourse of architecture and invent new forms.

Now the problem, I think, in Carpo's argument is that somehow this way of thinking about architecture is not really explaining what's going on today. This is a series of screenshots I took on Instagram one evening and as we see, it's

really like a total mess. But why is it a total mess? Because somehow every one of us today is really worried about doing something new, doing something that is novel and produce this novelty that is based on new formal methods that I would

like here to just trying to individuate some historical determination of this discourse. Because I believe that somehow this way of thinking goes back to the late 17th century and 18th century when architects, particularly in France, like Claude Perrault, which is

the drawing on the right, starts to think about the orders of architecture in this case as a composition of modules. While before it was a more, let's say, not mystical but less methodological way of thinking

the composition, for instance, on the left there is a drawing by Giorgio De Martini who is using the anthropocentric way of thinking about architecture as a matter of proportionality. So basically in that period somehow architects started to rethink architecture as a matter

of composition of parts that are defined through methodologies, through techniques and through specific methods. Of course, which is basically since then probably, or before but since then more explicitly, the question of the formal method in the context of composition has always been the opposition

between these two notions that are simplicity and complexity. If we start, let's say, with simplicity we have an architect like Durand who in the 19th century is somehow the first one who is the one who is more explicit than anyone else

starts to work on the idea of architecture as a composition of parts in which the overall whole is composed by these elements that come together through the formalization of grid in which that serves as a kind of a diagram in order to reconstruct the plan of architecture

and this is, for instance, one of his work but he was also giving to his students, for instance, paper that were gridded and students had to draw through these lines in order to make architecture. So there was this idea of methodology that starts to be really pervasive in this notion

of architecture and particularly with the tool of the grid which is, here I quote Connie Rowe because I believe somehow he's the one who most explicitly, more explicitly than anyone else, somehow defines the notion of the grid because he defines it as a sort of a democratic formal system in the sense that, of course, when you have all the parts that

are equal to each other you cannot think about parts, symmetries that are more predominant and so, according to him, it's also a way to somehow getting rid by modernism of monumentality even though probably we could discuss that.

And of course there are many examples of this kind of conception, Hildersamer is one of the most explicit or we all know it Le Corbusier in his city for 3 million starts to work on this idea of the grid with these buildings that are all the same and reconstruct this, of course, modernist notion of composition as an abstract diagram.

Or more explicitly than anyone else is Ms. van der Rohe who, for instance, in this project for Boston, for the University of Boston, is developing at first a master plan that is based on a grid, then the buildings are developed on the basis of the same grid that

it is separated and even the elevation and all the details are situated inside this kind of a diagram and frame. Or more explicitly and probably more radically others in just drawings, which is something

that probably we should discuss, are thinking about architecture as just as a composition, an abstract composition of automatic elements that goes together. This is made with a typing machine, for instance, and it is a sort of critique about the idea of composition looking for neutrality, which is something that, despite all the discussions

about complexity and all of these things, is still going on, somehow it's still topical in the sense there are a lot of architects who are working with these notions. For instance, Pier Vittorio Uredi in a theoretical way, it's reconsidering all of the notion

of neutrality and these kind of formal methods in order to think of architecture. And it's also developing projects that probably are a bit inhuman. This is done with Kirsten Gers as a master plan in which, again, the idea is basically

to make drawings with this notion of neutrality and simplicity as a compositional tool. On the other hand side of the spectrum, we have complexity that is a sort of a second history and I think it's more interesting nowadays to focus on these topics rather than on a general discourse, as Carpo and others do, in the sense that allow us to reconstruct

new meanings, I think, which, for instance, while in the 18th century in France architects were looking for simplicity, others, like Piranesi, were developing the idea of complexity

in architecture. This is archeological, so-called archeological reconstruction of the Campo Marcion Rome and him, for instance, is even arguing about the fact that, he writes, the human understanding is not so short and limited as to be unable to add new graces and embellishments to the works of architecture.

What he's saying is that somehow architects have the right to change architecture, to invent new shapes, to use nature as a reference, to do whatever they want, because, after all, we are smarter than just the idea of using strict methodologies. And of course, the idea of complexity is somehow we can also read the idea of the digital architecture.

This is, let's say, probably some of the latest tendencies, as the idea of developing a notion of complexity, of course, in this case, is more motivated from the sciences of chaos, complexity theory and computer engineering and so on and so forth.

Yet, as there is a history for the notion of simplicity, so there is one for the notion of complexity as a formal method. This is, for instance, John Shone, who made this project for the Bank of England as a sort of combination of parts, which reconstruct a sort of collage, even though there is a

whole, an overall composition in which all the parts are bending according to each other in order to reconstruct the overall plan. Or in the 20th century, of course, people like Rietveld, in this case, or, anyway, all the architects related to the steel movement, or Le Corbusier is working with the notion

of collage as a form of complexity, or even more explicitly, Peter Eisenmann and others are, of course, developing the idea of complexity as a formal method for composing architecture. Now, I think that if the grid is the main tool for the development of abstract simplicity,

as Aurelia argues, the grid can also be seen as a form, as a sort of figure, in the sense that I think Rosalind Krauss puts it pretty well in this paper, very famous paper about

the grids, in which she describes two ways of looking at the grid. One is the abstract one, while the second is the idea of the grid as a mapping of the space inside a frame, which is to say the grid as a figure. So on the one hand, we have the idea of the grid as an abstract diagram, while on the

other, the idea of the grid as a formal figure. Of course, just by looking at this figure, it's quite obvious that architects have worked with this notion. John Adak is probably the most explicit one with Peter Eisenmann. I think, though, that John Adak is more refined because somehow it's not just an abstract

composition, but it's also working on the notion of domesticity, particularly in some of his drawings like this one that is the Texas House 7, in which, as we see, he's really struggling with the need of, let's say, abstract composition as a figure with functional elements

in the plan, as a form of way of thinking about architecture. Of course, these architects were more interested in drawings rather than building, and I think rightly so. Yes, so, of course, this is really basically where I started from, I mean, almost stupidly,

with the figure of the nine square grid. But then how to produce a complexification in the sense, is it possible nowadays getting rid of the digital, which is one of the interests somehow I'm sharing with my advisor, to getting rid of the, let's say, literal idea of complexity as a natural embodiment by architecture?

Is there a way to create, again, a form of complexification that brings together, bridges together a notion of simple composition and complex composition? So if we look at fragmentation, which is defined by Robin Evans as the idea of having fragments

and pieces that come from a hole. So what is arguing is that when we look at a composition that is made of fragments, we identify something as broken. So it means that we become detective of its history. So the broken parts come from a sort of hole, and we can see the hole through these parts.

Of course, we also know that there are other ways that, like aggregation, or nowadays it's called discrete parts, and this kind of debate about way of aggregating parts without a hole. But I think Robin Evans describes this notion by using this metaphor, that is the metaphor

of the blind man who have to describe an elephant. And in this case, these blind men are asked to redraw and describe an elephant by touching it. And of course, each of the men can just reconstruct a part of it. And the overall composition of the elephant is of course incoherent, even though it reconstructs

the elephant. And he used, Evans uses this argument in order to describe the Cubist paintings. This is, I think, probably the most explicit in this sense. Or some architectural tendencies of the time. He writes in the late 80s, this is the project of the Falun de Zal in Paris.

Or he also describes this project by Alvaro Siza, which I won't say the name here in Portugal, in which somehow, but interestingly enough, he's criticizing these projects in the sense that he's arguing that there is a literal interpretation of the fragmentation.

So we have the fragmentation, but this Cubist idea is too literal, it's quite obvious according to Evans. So now, what I did is really, really somehow even stupid, if you want, which is I took

the grid and I just gave to the various parts some sort of rotations, random, in this case, rotations through all the pieces are rotated according to a point, in this case the central diagram, and then a series of formal manipulation in order to find, to reconstruct a whole among

these parts, in this case it's working on the angles and intersections between the parts. And then I overimposed, yes, this is the one, the starting grid as a diagram. So in order to have the overimposition of the diagram and the figure all together, having

these sorts of results, which again, those are really just drawings, it was the beginning of what I'm doing, which is a bit more complex and different, but anyway, this is what I've done as a form of, let's say, rethinking somehow the digital, which is not just about the production

of novelties, but it has some sort of interest in the relation with architectural history in the sense that I deeply believe that today, to look just for novelties or optimizations or all of those sorts of things, it's really restrictive and it's not really producing anything particularly interesting by now, while I think that architecture should probably

go and probably reinvent its history in a more critical way, and that's more or less it. Yep. The second paper is presented by Sergio Mendez, and his title, Circumstances Generate the

Form, Origin and Evolution of the Hospital Pavilion Typology. This paper analyzes the evolution of the typology of the hospital pavilion in Paris after the

fight in 1772 of the Hotel Dieu, and aims to demonstrate that this typology underwent several adaptations over time, depending on the context and the needs that prevailed when

it was used. The methodology is based on the analysis of variation in the form of typology, considering the relationship between the way the main circulation areas were organized and positioned pavilions.

Sergio Mendez is an assistant professor in construction and technologies within the master degree in architecture at ESAT, director of the laboratory of research in architecture and design at ESAT, and develops scientific activity in the area of construction and technologies.

Thank you very much. So good afternoon. I'm very fun to be here this afternoon. This is a paper I wrote specifically for this symposium, and it's kind of the end of an

investigation I have done in typology. So I have joined some figures with some schemes I have drawn, and you should interpret the schemes as, I don't know why this isn't working, sorry.

So we will have the black line will be the limits of the buildings, the continuous red line will be the main interior circulation zones, and the discontinuous red line will

be the government exterior circulation zones. So in 1772, it burned the Hotel Dieu, which was the biggest hospital in Paris, in medieval Paris, and this was a hospital where the mortality was rather elevated, because they have a ratio

of three patients for bed, and they didn't separate the patients by diseases, which means that when they have contagious diseases, everybody got sick. So when it burned down, several personalities interested themselves in discussing what they should do about the construction of the building, if they should reconstruct it as it was, or

if they should construct it in another way. And there was a French commission created to study these kind of buildings, and they launched a public architectural competition in 1777, and this is a project by Jean-Baptiste

Le Roy, in which he proposes several pavilions in a very symmetized way, and what is very interesting is what Le Roy wrote about this project, is that he speaks about the pavilions

if they were tents in a camp, and the idea was that there was a lot of hair between the buildings that was very important for avoiding the contagious diseases between the patients.

And so the French commission was created. They visited several hospitals, namely in the UK, and this was one of the most important hospitals they visited, it was the Royal Naval Hospital of Stonehouse, which was a project made by Alexander Rowhead, who was simultaneously an architect and a military.

And somehow this layout has something to do with the tents of the military in the fields. They are separated, one from the others, providing the possibility of the troops to do their maneuvers. And so in 1788, M. Tennant, which was a part of that commission, he published this book,

The Memoirs du des Hospitats Paris, and he proposed a pavilion hospital layout with Bernard Poirier, which basically is a building that moves along a great courtyard, and with the

pavilion disposed particularly to this central courtyard. So the first hospital to be built in France after the second cholera pandemic was this hospital, the Liboisier Hospital, which was built in between 1839 and 45 by Gaultier,

and this is the layout from the hospital we have seen proposed by Poirier. It's basically the same thing with a big courtyard and with the main circulation zones around the courtyard and the buildings, the pavilions disposed perpendicularly to the

central courtyard. So this typology suffered several evolutions, and in the New World, namely in the United States when they happened the American Civil War, a commission proposed precisely to construct

pavilion buildings, and they constructed this. This was one of the first pavilions, the pavilion hospitals they constructed, the judiciary square hospital, which was a variant of this scheme we've seen so far because it has a central corridor and the pavilions are situated on both sides of this corridor.

So this is a variant of this scheme I've called once the Pavilion Hospital in Double Bend, PHDB, and the other ones the linear pavilion hospitals, which would be LPHH typology. In 1862, the American Army, also in the context of the Civil War, built this hospital, which

doesn't exist anymore, none of these hospitals exist anymore. The Sutter Lee General's Hospital was a very large hospital built in Philadelphia to receive the wounded from the Civil War, and it had something like 700,000 beds.

And as you can see by the limits of the land, they managed to build a very efficient occupation of the land with a great density of occupation, but with the courtyard in the center.

This is the Herbert Hospital, was an hospital created to receive the wounds from the Crimean War. It was very based on the ideas of Florence Nightingale, who was a nurse, that proposes to create these buildings with the ideal conditions of poor hair, natural light, and controlled

temperature. At this point, they have understood that the important thing to do about contagious disease was to separate the six with this kind of disease from the other ones, and at the same time to have especially good ventilation between the pavilions in order to avoid the transmission

of the diseases. This is a variant of the LPHH typology. As you can see, these kind of buildings could have the pavilions situated alternated with

each other according to the corridor, or they could be aligned with one another. This is another case of high density of land occupation, the St. Vincent possible. It was constructed to receive the lepers in Shealy.

You can see the importance of the drawings because some of the images of the buildings are very, very, very bad. This is also a building where there was an enormous density of land occupation providing

to install all the six in this space. So this is the Welsh War Hospital, or the Netlay Hospital, this is more known. It's a variant of the LPHH typology, but in this case, the pavilions are not connected

one with each other. They have a covered exterior circulation area that links all the buildings. As you can see, this is a typology that has been used from that time until now in several kinds of buildings, namely in schools, by instance, or in other kind of buildings.

There are enormous kind of examples all over the world. So we can see that there's a great versatility of these buildings and pavilion complexes. Both the typologies, PhD, B, and LPH, allows the independence of the pavilions and they

assure a very high efficiency in the density which they ensure the occupation of the ground. So these typologies have been used on other kind of hospitals and I've studied the case of the universities. The first one to use this typology on the pavilion typology was clearly Thomas Jefferson,

the first president of the United States, who was also an architect. And he projected this layout, this plan for the University of Virginia in the United States.

It was built before, this is an interesting thing, it was built before the construction of the La Revoisier Hospital in Paris, which means that Jefferson also, at that time, he knew already the investigations that were being done about these kind of buildings.

This is the plan from Philip Johnson in 1967 for the University of St. Thomas, which is a scheme, it's rather similar to the ones we have seen so far with the double range of buildings, with the difference that the connecting main exterior circulations were

two stars high and the complex was closed. So this is the plan for the University of Averro here in Portugal and this was a case where this was a plan made by a team of the university, the faculty of the University

of St. Jerry in Porto, led by Nuno Portas and this was a case where it was very, very, very important to assure a very efficient land occupation because the university needed to construct a lot of departments for the several areas they had.

And as you can see, they managed to build a very large, and I don't know if you know the University of Averro, but they have a very large space in the interior of the departments and afterwards the buildings are constructed very near one to the others, just enough to

have a correct light and correct ventilation between the buildings. And this is the project for the building of the faculty of engineering here in Porto, which is a variant of the scheme adapted to the land they had, of course, but this is

a very big building with lots of students, 8,000 students and 550 teachers, and so it was precisely the scheme that allowed the land they had to occupy completely and install

all the students and teachers. This is one case I thought it was interesting to show. This is the University of Odense in Denmark. It's a case in the 60s and 70s of the last century where the creation of the new universities

in Europe, they tried to build some kind of megastructures to install all the universities. And this is, if you want to see it like this, it's a variant of the scheme of the Welsh hospital we've seen some minutes ago, but connected with a grid in order to allow interior

circulation between all the pavilions. So as we can see, it was the fact to need to avoid the spread of contagious disease that led to the topology of the pavilion hospitals, which is, as we can see, in fact, the circumstances

generated the form, which is the title of this presentation. But we can verify that these topologies are suitable for buildings of other kinds of buildings

with functions very different from those of hospitals. Not really, I didn't have the time in this presentation to study other kinds of buildings, but there's a point that's very important to explain, is the question of land occupation of some of the examples that we presented.

In the context where they have large wars of epidemics, and when the land was scarce or not enough big, the topologies allowed it to construct complexes with an enormous density of occupation of the soil, accommodating all the wounded and the sick.

Leslie Martin and Lionel March made two studies for soil occupation that are presented in the book called Urban Space and Structures. It's a book that was published in 1972 by a study that's carried out in the Cambridge

School of Architecture, which is a university where they have a very important component of mathematics. And the first study shows that by comparing the land occupation – sorry.

So if you have isolated buildings or buildings constructed exploring the periphery of the area, in both cases they have exactly the same area constructed. But in the first case with buildings with nine stars high, and in the second case with

three stars high, which means that this form of occupation of the land allows the same occupation as the other one, but less high, three times less high than the other one. And in this case it compared isolated pavilions with street pavilions and with petro-pavilions and they reached the conclusion that this one has two times the density of this one

and this one three times the density of the other one. And this is very much the studies that led to the solution of the University of Aveiro. As you can see, in order to leave the grand central space in the interior free from buildings,

what was precisely explored was the high density of occupation of the periphery of the land and it was these studies that allowed non-apartheidists to do this kind of plan, solving the problems

of the university. So this LPH topology, the LPH topology on the other hand, it allowed also a grand density of occupation of the soil, but in fact it doesn't leave any space free in the interior of the land.

Both of them are adequately used in very farce of very types of buildings. And as I wrote this paper for this symposium, which is on formal methods, I think this is a study that has been interesting precisely because possibly with some kind of an equated formal methods, this study could be systematized and try to find new applications for these

topologies. Thank you very much. The third paper of this panel is presented by Nuno Pereira da Silva, having as co-author

Sara Eloi, and is titled Will Drones Have a Rule in Building Construction? This paper presents and explains advances and potential contribution of robotic technologies to the architecture and construction industry, identifying the robotic technologies currently

in use, and analyzing some case studies performed with drones and the robotics arms. Nuno Pereira da Silva is a student of the fifth year of the master degree in architecture

at the University Institute of Lisbon. He has always been interested in using new technologies in his architecture practice as a student, and explored the impacts of these new technologies in the way he considered architecture.

Sara Eloi belongs to the Information Science Technologies and Architecture Research Center. She is an assistant professor at the University Institute of Lisbon, where she teaches architectural computer-aided design, computation, and research methodologies. Her areas of research include CAAD, shape grammars, and the possibilities of using them

in real design scenarios, immersive virtual and augmented reality for design process, and the analysis of the building space and space sequence.

Please. First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity of presenting the early stages of my doctoral thesis. This began in my masters, and it's now being developed during the doctoral thesis in order

to kind of prove how robotics can help us in the building processes nowadays. So first of all, as I said, it is a really first stage. We started to think what was the problem. First, for us, our practice, architecture and construction mainly, still uses the manual

labor. We used technology, yes, we can improve it, and we've been improving the ways we built. But we are not using this robotics, as we can say, as in other industries that I will

refer further. So in these questions, what we want to achieve is we want to understand if the use of robotics will reduce the time of building, if it will reduce costs, and mainly if it will free the

conceptual process of the creative process of architecture and of conceiving space.

So those are the main questions that we want to prove. So as I said, I wanted to see what we are using in other industries as opposed to construction industries. As we see many times, the automotive construction industry is fully robotized in some of the

brands. Lexus was the first one. We don't use manual labor in Lexus construction. We've used this same technique in shipyards, in smaller vessels, as Bavaria.

All the process is done automatically, and in the biggest ships and the biggest vessels, the robotics has helped reducing the risk, the human risk, in the building process. We can cut, we're holding everything together with robotics in our days.

And the computational components as well. We have fully robotized industries in China. That's the case. And we are starting to see the first shoes industry fully robotized with Nike that's

starting to think how robotics can improve the way they conceive their products. But in the other hand, that's the first thing we want to understand is the more we advance

in this part, the more value we attribute to the handmade. And we wanted to understand if that was going to happen in architecture as well. So we have the case in automotive and shipyards and into industry. The most expensive ones are made by hand and the most cheaper and the most common are made

by robotics. So for that, we try to understand the two technologies that we could use and we can use in our building industry. First of all, there's a robotic arm that we are quite used to see. In many cases, we see it in factories, as I said earlier.

This case is in Etegad, Zurich, where the project programmed wall. The students were asked to model in 3D some walls using bricks and then robotic arm would build it in the weirdest shapes.

We have this case in Cambridge and we have also in Porto, that I forgot the picture. But for us, the most constraints that we see in robotic arms in our process or in the construction

area is that it can only build in a small area around it and being around it or vertically. It has many constraints. As in the other hand, the drone could minimize its constraints.

It had to be bigger, it has to have the capacity of loading bigger parts or bigger components if we see it as in factories, but the constraint of location and area is unlimited. And this is the first one, the first project that was held at Etegad, Zurich, the flight

assembly project, where four drones with 1,060 foam bricks built a six-meter wall tower in four days in Pompidou Centre, if I'm not mistaken.

So after that, we started to talk with some of the most known persons on the robotic field and in architecture. We have Fabio Gramazio, to be at Brunswick, and teach a professor from FAOEP, and we asked

them how this technology would enter in our practice, in the construction process. And for all three of them, they think that it could happen, we can build it, it's already

possible to build with robotics in reality, but not in the nearest years, the future. Nevertheless, we now can use it, and we're not using it, in the precasted and prefabricated

industry. And it can be the next phase and the first stage of implementing robotics in a construction site. So for that, we tried, and we are now starting the first experiments in this field.

We want to create these three shapes. The first one, a tower with fixed bricks, that would be the challenge, was to build with bricks this time, not with foam bricks. First of all, we built a tower with fixed bricks, then a vertical wall, and then a complex

shaped, that's not shown there, wall, and how it could be built by using three, four, or five drones, and how much it would take to do it. So for us, we started to see that an understanding that how we are now starting the next stage

of the investigation, that not only we can use it now, as it can bring and change the way we think about architecture and the way we conceive architecture as a whole. And for us, the biggest challenge is that this technology allows us to build wherever

we want, being underwater, as we can see in the GALP projects at São Paulo, if I'm not mistaken, and in war areas, wherever we want, we can use them to minimize our risk in construction

industries. So thank you. Some questions? Anyone? You showed more or less what you're doing with drones, but is it only in, let's say,

a closed space, or also outside?

No, we're trying to do the first ones outside, because in controlled environments, we've seen that we can build it with foam elements, in this case, but we wanted to see if the drone could lift, and to upgrade the drone to lift bricks in this time, and to bring it outside, to start working with the winds and all the environmental constraints involved.

Usually, they're all inside. One of the questions I thought was the difficulty of moving the drones. They should be moved by humans, or by computers?

We were trying to make a software that could command all the drones, you can say four or five drones, or even one drone, so that our error margin could be smaller. In Ethiopia, we saw that error margin, after all the work had to be done in the software,

was 1.1 millimetre, so it's nothing. So we are trying to see if we can control five drones, for example, and may create complexer shapes outside, and if we can still have that margin or not.

About the topology of the hospitals, do you have any other kind of topology that was developed

during the same time, or this was the only one that was established? No, there were others, but I didn't study them. So at the beginning, the doctors didn't know what causes the contagious diseases.

They didn't have understood that the problem was that the seeds were all together in the same space, and so the contagious diseases could spread from one to the others. And when they didn't understand it, they tried to build these buildings in separated wings, with separated pavilions, and they tried the very sort of shapes, namely the

circular shape, by instance, or radius shapes. There are lots of other kind of principles. I've always studied the ones that are orthogonal, one to the other.

Did you make any kind of comparison between the different topology and different shapes that appeared? Did you make any comparison between the round ones and the small orthogonal ones? I didn't study the round ones, only the orthogonal ones. These ones I've shown today.

I would like to ask to Giacomo before. Firstly, in the beginning of the 90s, there was this hope that the digital would kill the grid, but somehow, instead of being a regular XY grid, it became like a morphed

UV grid. Do you think that there is new ways of breaking with the grid? And for Nuno, I would like to ask you, what is the tracking mechanism that you are using to locate the drones in space?

What is the tracking mechanism that you are using to locate the drones in space? Sorry, I was distracted.

I thought the idea. It was a question for you. Okay. Well, to get away of the grid. First of all, I like the grid. Secondly, there probably are. Yes, why not? The only problem is that, let's say, from a formal point of view, somehow that thing

started in the 90s, now it's kind of a deadlock, in the sense that it's in this sort of loop of producing, somehow, novities, but somehow always the same. There might be, yes.

What I would be interested in is that maybe going through the grid to find a way to hack it, somehow, by using it. Of course, the result is not there yet. That's pretty clear. But, I don't know. Yeah. Probably. I don't even think, yeah.

I mean, I like the squares, so. So, the second question was for me or for? For the tracking, we are trying to, first of all, we have to create a kind of square, you can say, a grid, yeah, where you can locate rooms and then you have, we are trying

to make with sensors, trying to delimitate an area, a whole area where they can build, first of all. So, after we can make it bigger and trying to achieve to build in difficult places.

For example, we are trying to make one on the top of our building in Ischter. That was our goal. We are trying to make it, we have a shading system on the windows that we wanted to try to build something in between two of those things, of those objects. And the idea was to create a kind of smaller space with sensors, yeah, and tracking, movement

tracking, in order to enclose a smaller area outside, trying to create a controlled environment and uncontrolled controlled environment. Strange to explain. I think. Another question? Yes. I have two questions for you.

The first is, is the movement of the drones pre-orchestrated or can they make decisions real-time? Do you have? In the beginning, we are trying to make it orchestrated so that we can, we have a shape

and we have to decide the routes they are taking, how they are movement on the space. But in the first that were done in Etegazvik, for example, they created an area where the drone could fly wherever you wanted.

We have, for example, the no-fly zone was in the center of the building and all around the building, the structure, the drone could go anywhere. But it had to follow always the X, Z and Y of the computer that we have, how can I say

it? In Rhino, we have the structure that we want and it decomposes the structure in single objects and it gives us references in our space. And the drone, they have an order. The first one will pick the first one and go to the second one. So it's all orchestrated. But we are trying to see if they can, if two drones could go to the same side, how they

would react or can they avoid each other. But we are still trying the first ones. Thank you. And the second question is, certainly there are some limitations to the building system with drones. And do you have any plans to document these?

For example, I can imagine they can't come within smaller than a certain distance to an existing wall. Creating kind of constraints on the space? I'm sorry? Creating constraints on the space?

Exactly. And those constraints will probably affect the design process as well. That's why I'm asking if you will document those constraints. In this case, we wanted to see. In the first time, we're bringing it outside. So we have to concentrate the movement and trying to see if it's possible or not and

how it can be built. But yes, of course, the spatial constraints of the area we're trying to build will obviously change the way we think and we create this structure. So, yeah. I hope I answered the question. Thank you. I have a little question.

Provocative, maybe. Do you think that, sorry, that might not, that this technological leap can force the architecture to take precaution? I mean, such a closer accompaniment of the executive phase of the project?

Yes and no in both ways.

What I'm trying to see now is the first part of my thesis of the master thesis was how to build this ground in this case. How can we build it? Or if they are or not able to lift heavy weights and what we have to do.

But now in the doctoral thesis, I'm trying to understand that not only the drone and the way we think the space or architecture or, how can I say it, to use something like this, we have to think to restructure our thinking.

And we have to, we are trying to create in our thesis, in my thesis, the doctoral thesis, kind of a comprehensive approach on how we can build with it. It's useless if we built a wall with rounds with bricks at the same time.

So a human can do it. So it's less margin of error, but we can do it. But perhaps it would be advantages for architecture if we could think the beginning or the, for example, we can think about a project and we can start delivering to do a factory that

we can control all the process and everything. And a line of construction of robotic arms could bring and could build everything. And then the drone could lift it and put it on a plate and start, or a drone or a symbiotic with a drone or a robotic arm could build whatever we want. We have to change the way we think.

It's strange. I don't know. Okay. There are other questions? I have one more question for Como.

Your methods, you just explained, would not be some sort of alternative to parametric design. I've never thought about that.

Well, I mean, I don't see it as a parametric method. But yes, there is a mathematical definition that it's really something. I mean, it's just a notation.

Yeah, it could. Maybe. It could be developed in that sense. I mean, the thing is that that one was really the beginning of what I've been doing in the last year or six months. Now it's been taken, I mean, it has taken a different direction in the sense that I'm using, let's say, 3D reconstructions for pictures so it's something different.

But I don't know about the parametric. If you say so, I have to rethink it.

The end of the paper, you state that architecture cannot be reduced to a method. Okay, so. Yeah, I have to apologize. I get taken by adrenaline when I talk and I say that. Okay. Okay. Yeah, no, but. But, and the way of representing architecture

to form is the project, okay? So, is, or what should be the project's role in your approach? Well, that's, yes, the thing is, I don't know, in the sense that, should there really be a rule,

in the sense that, in this overall discussion about methods, I came across this Austrian philosopher, Faye Levin, who wrote this book, Against Metal, which I think is pretty interesting now, and it is also because, first, he criticized the idea that, let's say, human disciplines are taking

too many protocols by sciences, so we are somehow developing certain kind of research programs in order to have fundings, but somehow, sometimes, a bit losing the point of what we are doing, and on the other hand, is architecture just a method, in the sense,

like, also in the 18th century, I think Piranesi is really right in that sense, when he argues that probably we shouldn't reduce architecture to just a thing. So, I don't know, it's not a question, but I wouldn't take it as a, in closing rule.

That's why many things can. Okay. No more questions? So, finished? Okay. Thank you for your attention. And.

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