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During the summer semester 2018–2019, a 3D concrete printed (3DCP) pavilion consisting of 47 unique free form parts was realized in the central square of the engineering campus of the University of Innsbruck. In a period of just 11 weeks, it was designed, engineered, manufactured, and assembled on-site to provide an attractive meeting space for students and staff alike. The parts were printed off-site in an extrusion layering process, using variable print speeds and filament heights to obtain radially fitting segments that were transported to the building site. A selection of parts was reinforced with innovative woven carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) strands, while the others were reinforced with in-laid conventional reinforcement bars. The parts were bolted to an on-site cast fibre-reinforced concrete floor and the seams were sealed with a silicone adhesive. This paper presents the entire project, including architectural considerations, geometrical parametric modelling, structural (safety) principles and design, manufacturing, and construction, including connections.

This publication concerns studies, programmes and designs for the project Sustainable Social Economic and Environmental Revitalization in the historic core of Multan City in Pakistani Punjab developed by several Politecnico di Milano Departments and Fondazione Politecnico di Milano, an institution that cooperates with Politecnico di Milano in the research fields of architecture, engineering and industrial design. The activities are part of the Debt Swap Agreement signed in 2006 between the governments of Italy and Pakistan for development in the social sectors. Besides the extraordinarily valuable architecture of the Walled City of Multan and its dense and hard-working population, there is a physical and environmental condition that is extremely problematic and that may threaten the continuity of life in the historic part of a city, well known for being among the world’s most ancient settlements. The social and cultural interest and the academic challenge of a new opportunity to deal with great traditions pushed the researchers to face the urgency and delicacy of a very complex theme. After the analysis, the surveys and the proposals, the Politecnico group completed the first operational phase reorganizing one of the main City Gate Place, building a new open pavilion and restoring a huge public building and the Gate. The last activity, planned and not yet implemented, refers to the Sarafa Bazaar Project, an integrated system for the urban arrangement through infrastructures systems as sewerage, public lighting and shading, new paving and conservation of historic building’s facades.

We will analyze how the incorporation of digital manufacturing in our schools is motivating a deep reflection about the need to be familiar with both the foundations of geometry as well as with more advanced knowledge. The reinterpretation of our inherited graphic design discipline in light of current digital tools can open up new fields of study and work, such as is occurring in the field of developable surfaces, warped surfaces and many others. In addition, through non-linear graphic processes and digital tools of parametric design, we can arrive at an "expanded graphic thinking" that we can place at the service of production and morphological research. Thus, the old descriptive geometry - geometry based on graphics – comes to serve a cybernetically enlarged mind. We will present four experimental pavilions resulting from several workshops on geometry and digital manufacturing carried out in collaboration between the University of Seville and several Ibero-American Universities. Based on the deep geometric knowledge of developable helical surfaces and surfaces of equal slope, a guided exercise is proposed to approach the design, manufacturing and assembly phases of these architectural installations on a real scale.

The PAAI project, the Mobile Self-Administered Adaptable Pavilion designed within the campUS research programme, offers the opportunity of regenerating anonymous fragmented urban areas, which are barely recognised and often excluded from the daily trajectories of the inhabitants; despite its finite time horizon and the uncertainty of the physical means, the attempt at “occupation” which took place was aimed at strengthening new social ties, to recover often neglected parts of the city and to offer opportunities for social interaction in order to reconstruct identities which had been lost or never existed. In this chapter, we explore some of the concepts underlying the theoretical bases for the PAAI project, which has been chosen to address conditions of marginality (both spatial and social) in order to build, even in the more peripheral areas, broadly shared and welcoming places which are recognisable and recognised. The projects promote social regeneration and the re-energisation of the region, connecting the physical living space and the symbolic experiential space; the activities promote the ephemeral and the immaterial as tools of urban regeneration; they are actions which deplete the transitory image of the city but build a lasting fantasy in the memory of the community.

In this chapter, there is a detailed illustration of the PAAI project—the Adaptable, Self-Managed and Mobile Pavilion of campUS—which is designed to respond to the expressed and unexpressed needs of the citizens of the northern area of Milan; this project has been conducted bridging the gap between the requirement for innovative strategies for the re-use of often neglected spaces to restore the area and the necessity of promoting cultural development and social cohesion as means of improving the quality of life of the periphery. People who live in peripheral areas represent those vulnerable sections of society that tend to be ignored rather than included or, simply, listened to. All the many different phases of life of the project are examined here: from the conception and co-planning, in which there has been direct involvement by local students and associations, up to the illustration of the many activities that the pavilion has hosted, provided in the twofold organisational and management component (the “behind the scenes”) and the performance (the enactment open to the city).

The aim of the research was to analyse some architectures designed by Le Corbusier and to visualize them with advanced technologies in order to explain better the singularity of their geometry and form. In particular we studied the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion and the Cabanon in Cap Martin. Both cases were developed with different systems of communication. The first one – the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion – is based on a protocol of dynamic real-time navigation, similar to the interaction we have using video games; for the second one we have used a static anamorphic anaglyph, which can be seen with the well-known glasses having two different red-blue lens, for the stereoscopic visualization [1]. All of them have requested different softwares and procedures which are described into the paper. The aim is to define some possible uses of these technologies to be applied for exhibitions and culture dissemination of architectural heritage.

Mudan ting牡丹亭 (Peony Pavilion), written by Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖(1550-1616) in the late sixteenth century, remains one of the most read and frequently performed Chinese drama nowadays. Best known for its depiction of qing 情 (emotion, passion), the drama is replete with allusions, topoi, and words of love. Building on my earlier work studying Mudan ting as an intertext of love in Passion, Romance, and Qing (Brill, 2014), in this paper I discuss the complex concept of love in the drama, focusing on the terms and concepts of love associated with the meanings of spring. The playwright and his characters repeatedly remind us that love is most complex and difficult to tell or comprehend. If so, how could such emotions and desires be expressed? This paper explores the strong presence and function of Chinese literary tradition in the process of the discovery and communication of the meanings of love in the drama.

This paper analyses the kārbandi of the Hashti pavilion at Bagh-e-Dolat Abad in Yazd. Kārbandi is a spatial system obtained through the projection of a star-shaped drawing onto a curved surface. It is characterised by a complex use of geometry and repetitive symmetry. The analysis of its geometrical aspects contributes to an understanding of the traditional rules underlying the original design. The kārbandi of the octagonal vestibule of the Hashti pavilion consists of a complex roof system that completes the octagonal volume of the room below; its intrados presents a pattern of interlocking ribbed arches. The paper also looks at the drawings, module and proportions of the Hashti pavilion, with the exclusive purpose of providing a key to reading geometries that, while complex in appearance can, in reality, be traced using a simple ruler and compass.

RoboCup 2003, the seventh RoboCup Competition and Conference, took place between July the 2nd and July the 11th 2003 in Padua (Italy). The teams had three full days to setup their robots. The competitions were held in the new pavilion no7 of the Fair of Padua (Fig. 1). Several scientific events in the field of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence were held in parallel to the competitions. The RoboCup Symposium was held in the last two days. The opening talks took place in the historical Main Hall of the University of Padua and the three parallel Symposium sections in the conference rooms of the Fair of Padua.