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Graduate architecture student Michael Leaveck uses a 3-D printer.

Tucked away in a red brick building in the middle of North Campus are classrooms with turquoise-colored walls, winding staircases and machines that seem to make just about anything.

Home to the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, Perloff Hall houses one of a handful of architecture schools across the country intent on expanding and reimagining architectural design through technological innovation.

With the use of machines that spit out 3-D models designed on a computer screen, students at the school are conceptualizing forms and theories in ways very different than their predecessors.

“In the past five to 10 years, more and more schools have been getting the physical equipment, and that’s what is allowing us to translate digital modeling into physical models more or less on a one-to-one scale,” said Adam Fure, a third-year architecture student and technology supervisor at the school’s studio.

Digital software from film and animation companies found its way into architecture about 15 to 20 years ago. A sudden increase in radically different designs was the direct result as the digital tools allowed architects to imagine new forms, Fure said.

The progression of this digitalization has subsequently led to the use of new equipment capable of expressing the imaginative ideas of its makers.

Each piece of equipment in the studio is meant to provide students with a tangible representation of their design.

“The point is to rapidly explore forms that are intricate and complex, ... to explore the look, form and feel,” said Michael Leaveck, a second-year architecture student and technology assistant at the studio.

The 3-D printer is one such machine. It takes any digital model articulated on a computer screen and then builds it by tightly layering thin layers of powder.

Coming out of the printer in a big rectangle of powder that must then be swept, students can see prototypes of everything, including scaled models of buildings and furniture, and strange shapes and curves that would be difficult to actually construct.

Without the 3-D printer, certain models either could not be made or would have to be done by hand – a process that could take up to a year.

One of the more common uses of the 3-D printer at the architecture school is to investigate minimal surfaces – planes where corners meet in a specific way. Technology seminars on the topic are taught every year.

The perfect illustration of a minimal surface is a soap bubble. Based on a theorem developed by German mathematician Hermann Schwarz, a spherical soap bubble encloses a given volume of air in the least amount of space.

Observing the pieces on display in the halls of Perloff, some look like hollowed-out, smoothed-down coral, while others approximate a conglomeration of stylized beach foam.

“An object isn’t 3-D printed to a finished product. ... It’s about using a system to work in, to distort and deform, to stretch and to change,” Leaveck said.

The emphasis on the conceptual thought that such technology can provide is highlighted by how many students who graduate never use the machines again, Leaveck said. For students, it’s not just about learning the technology, but rather how it can be “a tool to realize innovation.”

On average, 3-D printers cost around $20,000, according to a price quote by Z Corp., a leading retailer in 3-D printers. More advanced printers (ones that print in color, for example) can cost up to $50,000.

Another piece of literally cutting-edge technology at the architecture school is the Computer Numerically Controlled Mill. It takes a slightly different approach than the 3-D printer by utilizing a digitally configured surface and carving it into a piece of foam or wood, Fure said.

Used more to conceptualize how joints and curves work, the mill allows students to generate forms that express the underlying geometry of a surface.

Students quickly grasp how to use the equipment as they work with the “mathematics of surfaces,” Leaveck said.

After their first quarter at the architecture school, students start using the equipment in the studio as part of their own research or through specialized technology seminars.

“It’s a whole other dimension to architectural modeling which wasn’t available before this technology and that a lot of schools are really trying to handle,” Fure said.

While the architecture school is up-to-date with its technology, private schools often have more money to spend on newer equipment, Fure said. But what sets UCLA apart is their generally younger faculty.

Much of the UCLA architecture faculty is among the first generation of computer-literate architecture students. The result is a greater integration of state-of-the-art technology in the curriculum.

“In that respect, it’s probably one of the top schools in North America. They have become experts and can impart that expertise,” Fure said.

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