“The challenge has always been about supply, price, and, as a result, number of people who know how to use it,” says Greg LeMond, founder of LeMond Composites, who first developed the carbon fiber bicycle frame for use in his multiple Tour de France-winning career. “Our goal is to open up the market beyond specialty purposes to architecture more broadly—for example, to make a bridge more earthquake-resistant. Instead of keeping things secret, we want to democratize its usage, and this exhibition is part of that effort.”
Got all that? Robots using game-changing materials.
As if that’s not ambitious and complex enough, then COVID-19 happened.
From in-person to virtual
“Architects are very hands-on,” says Ezio Blasetti, professor in the Graduate architecture program at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. “Many aspects of this class were designed to be in person.”
Blasetti and his students in the seminar, Computational Composite Form, are the brains behind the robots. They team up in groups to program various parts of the robots, and, before the pandemic, would trial their fabrications in Penn’s robotics lab.