Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper discusses an emerging field of research in architecture, kinetic design. This approach has been used in different ways through history, but the technological advances of the “Third Industrial Revolution” offer new perspectives on this topic, along with various design innovations. To face this demand, architects must develop new strategies rooted in performance, connectivity and control, and process them to support and inform design. In order to explore these challenges, a group of researchers organized a summer school in 2016. The partnership between ISCTE-IUL and Sapienza University of Rome emerged as an opportunity to join an international community to present recent research, teaching or practice related to architecture, technology, computation, mathematics and geometry. In addition, an experimental learning-by-doing design studio was developed, which allowed for testing a digital workflow to create foldable surfaces based on rigid origami geometry. The major objective of these events, which is summarised in this paper, is to contribute to the debate around digitally-driven kinetic architecture.