The J. James Woods Lectures in the Sciences and Mathematics presents Skylar Tibbits talking about “A 4D Future,” February 18 at 7:30 p.m. in the Atherton Union Reilly Room. Admission is free and open to the public without tickets.
3D printing has grown in sophistication since the late 1970s. TED Fellow Skylar Tibbits is shaping the next development, which he calls 4D printing: where the fourth dimension is time. This emerging technology will allow us to print objects that then reshape themselves or self-assemble over time. Think: a printed cube that folds before your eyes, or a printed pipe able to sense the need to expand or contract.
In this keynote, Tibbits explains how we are now able to program nearly everything—from bits of DNA, proteins, cells, and proto-cells; to products, architecture, and infrastructure. Programmability and computing are becoming ubiquitous across scales and disciplines. Tibbits shows us how soon these small-scale technologies will translate into solutions for large-scale applications—and what it means for your industry.
Tibbits, Director of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, is a trained Architect, Designer, Computer Scientist and Artist whose research focuses on developing self-assembly and programmable material technologies for our built environment. He is currently a faculty member in MIT’s Department of Architecture, teaching graduate and undergraduate design studios and co-teaching How to Make (Almost) Anything, a seminar at MIT’s Media Lab.
Tibbits was awarded a 2013 Architecture League Prize, TED Senior Fellowship and has been named a Revolutionary Mind in SEED Magazine’s 2008 Design Issue. Previously, he has worked at a number of renowned design offices including: Zaha Hadid Architects, Asymptote Architecture and Point b Design. He has designed and built large-scale installations around the world, including locations in New York, Philadelphia, Paris, Calgary, Berlin, Frankfurt, Long Beach, Edinburgh and Cambridge.
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