Circular Design and Digital Craft In Architecture

RADD is a design research project and exhibition exploring Resource Availability Driven Design (RADD), a workflow for building with unpredictable, discarded materials like wood, stone, and architectural waste. When conventional manuals don't exist, we turn the unknown into a design driver.

This project, centered around a "street lab" curatorial context, focuses on three key dimensions: digital culture, interactive navigation, and material circulation within the Huaqiangbei community. Through AI-assisted design, AR/MR immersive interaction, and community co-creation, it constructs an "urban interface" that blends the digital and physical, addressing the potential of urban space in addressing sustainability, cultural heritage, and future manufacturing.

This study presents an integrated framework that combines computer-aided design (CAD), robotic automation, and extended reality (XR) to enhance the precision, efficiency, and scalability of historic and heritage building (HHB) restoration. This approach transforms from traditional manual restoration to a data-driven, computationally guided methodology by bridging digital retrieval, automated fabrication, and real-time expert collaboration. The Historic-Led Restorative System (HLRS) and Extended Automation System (EAS) were developed to facilitate multi-stage restoration processes, from 3D digital modelling and data simulation to robotic-assisted assembly.

This research presents the design, locomotion principles, and kinematic modeling of a novel multi-module 'kwk' (Kresling-Waterbomb-Kresling) structured origami robot, engineered to mimic the agile locomotion of a caterpillar. Leveraging the transformative principles of origami-inspired engineering, this robot addresses critical challenges in robotic mobility within complex, confined, and continuously bending environments. The Kresling origami segments are functionally designated as 'Kresling-Thoracic segments', providing robust twisting capabilities, while the waterbomb origami parts serve as 'Ball-Abdominal segments', generating powerful inching forces. This hybrid design uniquely integrates the negative Poisson's ratio property of waterbomb structures with the twist-buckling characteristics of Kresling patterns to enhance overall stretchability and adaptability. A detailed kinematic analysis for both individual origami modules and their hybrid combination is presented, demonstrating how independent motor control simplifies the system's complexity. This research fills a significant gap by providing preliminary design, dynamic analysis, and performance testing for this specific hybrid origami robot, thereby establishing a viable framework for modeling and controlling multi-module origami robotic systems with potential applications in rescue operations and bio-physician engineering.

Hong Kong's rapid urbanization and expansion have resulted in a high incidence of new urban construction projects as well as building renovation and restoration activities. The above architectural activities in the city are characterized by inconsistency in design styles and inconsistency with the neighborhood environment. The proposal of a self-weakening design style of different designers in the same neighborhood should be taken as a practical consideration at the early stage of design. In this research, a dataset of old building facades in Hong Kong is provided, and the method of training a deep convolutional neural network is used to realize the coupling of Pix2Pix GAN algorithm to the whole or local design generation of building facade in Hong Kong. Moreover, a trained network based on the architectural styles of Hong Kong is provided with 160 sets of collected original image datasets of Hong Kong building facades for organizing pre-calibration. It classifies the elemental information of complex building facades for later training of the network and automatic generation to give new construction and renovation schemes a replicable technical route.

“Ecological architecture” calls for a paradigm shift in architectural processes, urging designers to consider the externalities imposed on other biological species and the environment. This study aims to explore how salvaged windthrow and other solid wastes can be repurposed and seamlessly integrated into architectural processes. However, upcycling presents unique challenges in volatile material supply, difficult craftsmanship, and design complexity. Their cooperative fab-lab initiative works with local communities to innovate and change the way they design and fabricate public facilities using wood upcycling technologies. In fostering socially-sustainable and environmentally-conscious architectural practices, our project questions: “how can local knowledge and emerging technologies be integrated to enhance participatory wood upcycling within architecture design and fabrication?”. Novel tools in metaverse and automation technologies may help to democratise design knowledge and bridge skills gaps, advancing cooperative processes between different stakeholders. The resulting craftsmanship documentary, waste wood digital twin library, and phygital co-creation and co-production pipeline contributes to more informed community practices in ecological architecture for design practitioners and researchers.

This research explores the architectural potential of decommissioned stone and reclaimed building components through an AI-driven design and XR-assisted robotic fabrication framework. Responding to the pressing need for circularity in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC), the project introduces RAAD (Resources Availability Driven Design) - a cyber-physical system designed to reconcile material unpredictability with intelligent, adaptive design processes. RAAD consists of three interconnected modules: Material Reclamation System (MRS), Structural Typological Optimisation and Assessment (STOA), and Extended Reality-Assisted Assembly (XRAA). The MRS digitally captures, classifies, and creates passports for reclaimed stone using point cloud scanning. The STOA module builds on this data. It employs AI generative techniques, specifically the Wave Function Collapse algorithm, to transform physical joinery tests into rule-based grammars for structurally and culturally coherent reassemblies. This supports a binary design strategy, blending neoclassical typologies with deconstructivist experimentation. Finally, the XRAA module guides non-specialists through intuitive, efficient construction, prioritizing interlocking sequences over traditional layering. Prototyping experiments across various scales demonstrate the system's adaptability. By fusing digital intelligence with reclaimed material agency, this project offers a sustainable and culturally resonant design methodology. It advances cyber-physical integration and participatory construction, offering new pathways for resource-aware architectural futures.

Irregularly shaped wood created as waste from construction is considered challenging to reuse because of its complicated geometry and a lack of well-defined design methods. Here, we propose a sustainable building design and construction framework as a systematic methodology for upcycling irregular off-cut wood into new components. This framework consists of repeatable steps, as follows: a. material reclamation system: 3D scanning is employed as the main technical method to record a material’s 3D information and material-specific parameters and create a database; b. structural generation and assessment system: material screening, voxel-based filling, and structure generation based on finite element analysis to employed to assess the generated results prior to construction to optimize the final structure. Using furniture, building components, and installations/buildings, we verify the use of this framework for material recycling and generative design and construction.

This project considers the undervalued resource of used, waste, and off-cut wood as a new language for discrete architectural components. Instead of downcycling useful timber, this project considers the possibility of tapping into this large waste resource to keep more timber products in use.

Off-cuts are categorised by sectional dimensions and then modularised to set lengths. These modules are then packed and reconfigured into digital voxel sets and are aggregated using the Wave Function Collapse algorithm to create larger, specific formations of the timber off-cuts, joined by folded metal connectors for assembly and reconfiguration.

WFC is used as a constraint programming algorithm to solve 3D combinatorial problems. Voxels are categorised for placement by design typology. By limiting and constraining the allowable aggregation of the voxel types according to specific design parameters, a spatial language is developed which explores the potential for this waste product to become a useful and beautiful building material at multiple scales.

Rapid urbanization has led to resource shortages, necessitating sustainable approaches in the building industry. This research proposes a preliminary voxel-based modular-architectural design strategy (VMADS), focusing on reusable “H” blocks for component connections and construction. By integrating computational design and robotic fabrication, VMADS enhances precision and efficiency. The framework addresses discrete building theory, prefabrication, and autonomous architecture, emphasizing wood’s anisotropic nature for structural integrity. Experimental results validated VMADS through digital simulations and physical tests, demonstrating its potential to create sustainable, reconfigurable structures and revolutionize construction practices.

The increasing demand for social well-being and infrastructure development, along with the exploitation of physical resources and the depletion of natural ecological resources, have led to a series of environmental problems, such as global warming and climate change. As a result, the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals have called for the reduction in the impact of urban development on the environment and the creation of adaptive, inclusive and sustainable habitats. The circular economy (CE) is a new economic paradigm that contributes to sustainable socioeconomic development. It aims to lessen the extraction and acquisition of material resources through recycling and rationalise the allocation and reuse of social resources. For instance, recycling wood, a fundamental component of municipal waste, alleviates some pressure to extract raw materials and solves the dilemma of turning materials into waste. In this context, this study investigates five mills and logging sites around London as a source of material support. The findings highlight that wood recycling methods remain inadequate, with an excessive amount of wood being landfilled, downgraded and disposed without the possibility of reuse. The experiment completed the material collection of Waste, Under-use and Off-cut wood based on photogrammetry and laser scanning technology. According to the practical features found within the geometrical data, a material library was generated to wood select to the porosity requirements of the building. Results from the investigation illustrate how recycled wood components can be reintegrated into new construction as part of sustainable building design (SBD).

Latent RADDicals is a design research project and exhibition exploring Resource Availability Driven Design (RADD), a workflow for building with unpredictable, discarded materials like wood, stone, and architectural waste. When conventional manuals don't exist, we turn the unknown into a design driver.

Our process begins by digitally scanning salvaged materials into a dynamic inventory, creating "digital passports" of their form and potential. Using generative algorithms like Wave Function Collapse, we extract spatial logics from real-world patterns to recompose new architectural formations.

This iterative approach merges tacit knowledge with computational precision. XR tools guide physical assembly, creating a feedback loop between human intuition and machine logic. Latent RADDicals embodies "No One Has Taught Me This," emphasising improvisation, experimentation, and hands-on making. This cyber-physical craft system promotes a circular, resource-conscious design future where learning emerges through action, tacit craft knowledge, and emerges from "doing," not just "knowing”.