ceramic sharkskin prototype

What is we could rethink the design of a brick? Could we use dig­i­tal mod­el­ing to alter its thick­ness, its ther­mal per­for­mance, and its means of pro­duc­tion to be more effi­cient and afford­able? The shark­skin is a pro­to­type ceramic skin for build­ings. Inspired by mol­e­c­u­lar stud­ies of shark­skin, it can be dig­i­tally mod­eled to achieve cer­tain per­for­mance capa­bil­i­ties, such as water col­lec­tion, vari­able ther­mal mass, and solar con­trol, depend­ing on the cli­mate and pro­gram­matic needs of the building.

Fab­ri­ca­tion
Each tile is slip-cast in a CNC-milled ingot to exact spec­i­fi­ca­tions. This com­bi­na­tion of cen­turies old ceram­ics and con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal CNC man­u­fac­tur­ing enables the pro­duc­tion of a more cli­mate respon­sive build­ing sys­tem, while cap­i­tal­iz­ing upon upon the ease of fab­ri­ca­tion that could be eas­ily repli­cated in devel­op­ing coun­tries with lit­tle or no mod­ern technology.

This work is from a stu­dio with pro­fes­sor Ron Rael at UC Berke­ley. For the real deal on this cut­ting edge research, check out: www.rael-sanfratello.com