(Un)Stable States
Intelligent Fabrication Workshop, ENSA Versailles
The workshop investigated VF in its wet, pliable state and its transition toward a dry and mechanically stable condition. Rather than defining a single fabrication method or predetermined formal outcome, students worked directly with the material's capacity to fold, bend, contract, warp, and stiffen. The workshop was organized around parallel lines of investigation: nodes and connections, compression-only shells, curved and folded surfaces, soft curved folding and tailoring, weaving with strips, active bending and tensegrity, corrugated hybrid panels, darting, and wet–dry cycles.
Through these approaches, (Un)Stable States examined how the same material transformation can produce distinct spatial and structural principles. Physical experimentation operated as the primary mode of design inquiry, allowing fabrication techniques and organizational logics to emerge in interaction with the changing mechanical and geometric properties of VF. The resulting studies expanded the Half Forms research into a collective field of material experiments, testing multiple ways in which unstable material states can participate in architectural formation.
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