Greg Lynn SUPRASTUDIO Winter 2014: FUTURE FACTORY

Course: SUPRASTUDIO Lynn, SUPERAEROROBOSPATIAL MOTION:
Greg Lynn / Julia Koerner
Smart factories
With our industry partner Boeing, the studio explored new approaches to airplane factories with special focus on the three-dimensional motion of people and parts to optimize safety and ergonomics. We visited the C17 Factory in Long beach as well as the Everett factory in Seattle for a benchmark in current approaches to assembly and differing moving and non-moving lines. By informing the students as to Boeing values and methodologies it informed their ideas and his ability to think in terms of innovation and new approaches guided the students toward ideas that could have potential. The solutions proposed by the students were exceptional as alternatives to the physical and mechanical possibilities in current factories as well as being able to be realized technically and architecturally. Each of the students departed from the factory “floor” model of assembly and instead proposed that the most efficient and ergonomic approach to the positioning of parts, carts, platforms and assembled components was the move elements in three dimensional more vertical space. The implications of this shift is a better utilize vertical volume and a reduction of: building footprint, distances of travel, costs and time to assemble.
Spinoffs for use of UAV technology
The studio also applied current Boeing UAV technology for lifting and reconfiguring building scale rooms and building components. One major activity within the research was the visit by a group “CDG INNOVATION SAN DIEGO” who were invited to IDEAS/UCLA by Kevin Meredith to demonstrate “Vertical LIFT Challenge DEMO” in February 2014. They demonstrated an incredible amount of variety in the scale, design and technology of UAVs. The guidance during the course by Boeing partner Branko Sarh was extremely insightful and inspiring and he was able to respond to a variety of lifting and moving concepts with suggestions for the students to pursue rotor, hover and dirigible lifting mechanisms. The students applied these technologies to seasonal and sometimes even more frequent transformations of Hotels, Residential Towers, Corporate Headquarters and Music Halls where flexibility and opening and closing to the outdoors is desired.