|Bogotá, Colombia|
Robot_Lab projects are defined as transdisciplinary workspaces that aim to investigate, identify, and propose new approximations from various disruptive patterns to promote speculations and discussions on our discipline and practice in the region and pedagogical methodologies in undergraduate academic spaces.
These projects are structured in several short explorations called: translations. The main idea is to build a series of iterations, prototypes, and representations as translations of the historical cases studied. Questions such as: How can historical artifacts be re-imagined with the robotic arm? We start from a series of historical artifacts in the local context -or in a state of abandonment to initiate the sequence of translations. In 2022 we selected the XVI century military wall of Cartagena de Indias in Colombia as a piece of high significance and historical value to speculate about its contemporary resignification. This historical object became the perfect exploration scenario for constructing architectural artifacts that could “complete” the demolished parts of the wall, from its material exploration as programmed ruination and a controlled robotic manufacturing process to envision its futuristic responsibilities. A workflow is developed where images are translated into a 2D toolpath which is translated by robotic 3D controlled free-form edition of the material and later translated into the physical world through 3DScans based on robotic controlled choreographies.
The reconstruction of all pieces allows to create new artifacts informed by the reality of the pieces. Is it possible to complete the wall, re-reading its material arrangement and capacities? Understanding the processes of ruin and the climatic onslaught or the growth of the sea level? Can the ancient coral stone become a synthetic coral reef that deals with the fast-rising sea level? Robot-Lab allows us to explore these capabilities and demonstrate that it can address intriguing questions of our context through technology.