Research

The installation exposes the lost histories and unrecognized imaginations of creativity born in spite of the segregation and land vacancy found in ‘Black Belt’ neighborhoods of Chicago’s South Side.

This project discusses the development of a 3D printing process to manufacture porous ceramic materials from clay for thermal insulation and passive cooling in buildings.

Ceramic Prototype: Hypar Tower explores the structural capabilities of slender ceramic extrusions – a product commonly utilized for exterior claddings, rain screens or sun-shading elements.

How can we deposit multiple clay bodies with a single integrated design to 3D printing process? While the context for this project is the growing area of functionally graded materials and multi-material processes the work began by looking back in time. A historic example of tiles with multiple clay bodies are encaustic tiles.

This research utilizes a spatial printing technique with an enhanced responsive system for material feedback to 3D print light-porous clay lattices in a short time with efficient use of the material, and designed functions and aesthetics.

Developed by researchers and students from the Material Processes and Systems (MaP+S) Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Ceramic Tectonics: Tile Grid Shell explores the structural capabilities of thin, large format ceramic tiles – a product commonly used as an interior surface finish or exterior cladding.

The recent opening of a ceramic pavilion celebrates the completion of a multi-year research collaboration between MaP+S and the ITE at TU Graz. The project involved the development of a novel tectonic system where structural ceramic elements, custom-designed, combine with high-strength concrete into an efficient tectonic construction system for loadbearing shells and surfaces.

Ceramic Morphologies explores the design opportunities of a novel ceramic 3d printing strategy.

MaP+S joined forces with IACC Barcelona (Alex Dubois), the University of New South Wales (Kate Dunn), and Sydney University (Dagmar Reinhard) for a RobArch 2016 workshop on interactive 3D printing.

The tessellated wall explores the design space of a novel ceramic customization strategy developed by MaP+S researchers and students. The technique involves the automated cutting of clay extrusions that are industrially produced on a state of the art extrusion line. The ceramic elements have been extruded from a single die, thus reducing tooling costs.

Ceramic Material Systems’ (Birkhauser 2015) by M. Bechthold, A. Kane and N. King is out now!

The Protoceramics Exhibition is on display in Valencia, marking the third contribution of MaP+S to the Cevisama. Working with thin and extremely large format tiles MaP+S reimagined tiles by proposing new material formation that lend the thin material structural properties through cutting, folding, and bending.

As guest professor at the TU Graz, Institute for Structural Design, M. Bechthold co-taught a studio on structural use of ceramics with Professors Stefan Peters and Andreas Trummer as well as Dipl.-Ing. Felix Amtsberg. Students produced near full-size prototypes to research the tectonic possibilities of the newly proposed systems.

Protoceramics is an ongoing experiment geared towards producing novel material formations with a special interest in tectonic performance. Conducted by the Material Processes and Systems (MaPS) group at Harvard University, the project investigates the latest generation of thin, large-format ceramic tiles, which presently are largely used as interior surface finish or exterior cladding. Can this material be used in a structural way?

DRG completed a suspended ceramic installation at the 2014 Cevisama in Valencia, Spain as the centerpiece of this year’s international show. Sponsored by the Valencia Trade Fair Association and by ASCER, the ceramic shell represents the mock-up of a structural ceramic /concrete shell system that is currently under development in collaboration with the Chair for Structural Design at the TU Graz, Austria.

MDes students have married age-old materials with modern processes to create beautiful, innovative building surfaces.

DRG at the 2013 Milan MADE Expo A ceramic design project by Linda Zhang and Jenny Hong was featured at […]

Sky Garden Sky Garden is a prototype investigating the potential for suspended ceramic ceiling elements. Compared to existing suspended ceilings, […]

Tectonics Tessellation: Ceramic Structural Surfaces Team: Matías Imbern, Felix Raspall, Qi Su Structural surfaces are extremely efficient in the use […]

CeramicsLAB student work featured in MISC article Work by several MDesS and DDes students in DRG class ‘Material Processes and […]

SmartGeometry 2012: Ceramics 2.0 DRG student and faculty were selected to run one of the workshop clusters at the 2012 […]

Customization continues to be a major challenge for the industrial production of ceramic tiles. The strategic use of robotic technology provides possible pathways to reduce the constraints of mass-production techniques.

Robotic Tile Placement Team: Martin Bechthold, Panagiotis Michalatos, Nathan King, Anthony Kane, Amanda Lee Sponsored by ASCER Tile of Spain, […]

Ceramic LAB students Featured at Cevisama 2012 Four student projects from the Fall 2011 course ‘Material Processes and Systems: Ceramic […]

Ceramic Futures Featured at Cevisama 2012 The Ceramic Futures research project, conducted by the GSD Design Robotics Group and sponsored […]