This work presents a multi-level modeling and design framework for weft knitted fabrics, beginning with a volumetric finite element analysis capturing their mechanical behavior from fundamental principles. Incorporating yarn-level data, it accurately predicts stress-strain responses, reducing the need for extensive physical testing. A simplified strain energy approach homogenizes the results into three key variables, enabling rapid, accurate predictions in minutes. After validation against experiments, our framework can simulate new knit fabrics without additional tests. In real-world scenarios, fabrics often feature variations in yarn materials or patterns. The framework extends to heterogeneous fabrics, showing that transitions between distinct regions can be captured using simple mechanical analogies: springs in series and parallel. This allows heterogeneous textiles to be treated as idealized patchworks of homogeneous pieces, preserving predictive accuracy. The method is demonstrated by designing and producing a compression sleeve with uniform pressure, illustrating how the framework supports development of knits tailored to specific assistance levels and anatomical features. By combining volumetric finite element analysis, simplified model through homogenization, and controlled material transitions, this approach provides a scalable, high-fidelity path toward next-generation weft knitted fabric design.

Natural materials achieve adaptive behavior through hierarchical organization and coupled mechanisms across scales. Their translation into engineering, however, remains largely heuristic. What is missing is a formal translation framework that carries biological design logic into engineered realization while preserving physical consistency across levels of abstraction. Here we present a category theoretic compositional framework for verified nature-derived design. The framework defines a category of stimulus response dynamical systems with natural and artificial subcategories. It introduces a structure preserving implementation functor from biological mechanics to engineered systems. It also formalizes a machine agnostic specification layer that links behavioral intent to executable fabrication programs. We instantiate the framework on the hygromorphic pinecone hierarchy as a representative biological case. We implement the full pipeline in Grasshopper, where formal specifications are translated into modular parametric scripts that preserve the compositional structure of the model. The resulting designs are fabricated by fused filament fabrication, evaluated experimentally, and tested against model predictions derived from the pipeline. The current implementation generates four actuator classes spanning two stimulus types and two kinematic responses. One actuator arises purely through composition from previously validated components, without additional manual derivation. The results show that compositionality can function not just as a descriptive language, but as a generative and system level verifiable method for mechanical material design. More broadly, the work provides a concrete route for embedding formal multiscale reasoning within increasingly computational, generative, and physics-driven design workflows.

Current approaches to coastal resilience often fail because they rely on prediction and control in an era of deep climatic uncertainty. This research proposes an environmental architecture that serves as an adaptive mediator, facilitating co-assembly between human intervention and natural systems. This design methodology shifts the paradigm from computed solutions to computing systems that continuously adapt via environmental feedback. Using a high-throughput computational pipeline, we explore a parameter space of geometric configurations, designing submerged structures that modulate hydrodynamic energy to direct sediment transport and grow a nascent island. These structures were deployed as a Real-World Lab in the Maldives, serving as a full-scale test of this Co-assembly approach to resilience. Over a 12-month period, the structures facilitated the accretion of nascent landforms, demonstrating an adaptive alternative to dredging. The results illustrate the potential for computational design to instrumentalize environmental science, creating architectural systems that do not merely inhabit a site but actively compute with its physical forces to build resilience over time.

This project develops a moon-inspired masonry dome for a new Lunar Mission Control at MIT, employing novel construction techniques to balance structural efficiency and sustainability. The Luna dome is constructed from blocks of foamed glass, a lightweight and easily machinable material that ensures compliance with the load-bearing limits of the floor beneath. No mechanical connections or mortar are used so that the structure is a no-tension assembly of blocks. The stability of the partial dome geometry is demonstrated with graphic statics following a modified version of the Wolfe method. By discretizing the geometry into optimized segments, the structure enables rapid construction with minimal formwork, reducing material waste and labor intensity. Designed with modularity in mind, the dome can be disassembled, relocated, and reassembled. This work demonstrates how unconventional materials and modular construction methods can redefine the possibilities for transportable, reusable architectural systems.

Haptic devices typically rely on rigid actuators and bulky power supply systems, limiting wearability. Soft materials improve comfort, but careful distribution of stiffness is required to ground actuation forces and enable load transfer to the skin. We present Haptiknit, an approach in which soft, wearable, knit textiles with embedded pneumatic actuators enable programmable haptic display. By integrating pneumatic actuators within high- and low-stiffness machine-knit layers, each actuator can transmit 40 newtons in force with a bandwidth of 14.5 hertz. We demonstrate the concept with an adjustable sleeve for the forearm coupled to an untethered pneumatic control system that conveys a diverse array of social touch signals. We assessed the sleeve’s performance for discriminative and affective touch in a three-part user study and compared our results with those of prior electromagnetically actuated approaches. Haptiknit improves touch localization compared with vibrotactile stimulation and communicates social touch cues with fewer actuators than pneumatic textiles that do not invoke distributed stiffness. The Haptiknit sleeve resulted in similar recognition of social touch gestures compared to a voice-coil array but represented a more portable and comfortable form factor.

String and grains can be combined to create structures capable of bearing significant loads. In this work, we prepare columns and beams through a layer-by-layer deposition of granular matter and loops of fiber strings, and characterize their mechanical properties. The loops cause the grains to jam, and the inter-grain contact leads to a Hertzian-like constitutive response. Initially, one force chain that propagates vertically through the column bears most of the compressive load. As the magnitude of the load is increased, more force chains form in the column, which act in parallel to increase its stiffness, akin to a "super-Hertzian" regime. Applying a compressive prestress enables the structures to withstand shear, enabling the fabrication of cantilevered beams. This work provides a mechanical framework to use elastogranular jamming to create rapid, reusable infrastructure components, such as columns, beams, and arches from inexpensive, commonplace materials, such as rocks and string.

A silicone-based embedded additive manufacturing method, called Rapid Liquid Printing (RLP) is applied to the fabrication of soft pneumatic actuators to investigate and demonstrate its potential for applications in soft robotics. This process is shown to improve on traditional silicone casting and additive manufacturing of elastomers, the two main manufacturing methods used in soft robotics, by offering complete design freedom at high speed without compromising material properties. Contrary to existing silicone printing techniques, RLP uses commercially available materials and a simple robotic arm or gantry CNC machine to print large structures in a supporting gel at a rate of four times the speed of state-of-the-art multi-material printers. To determine the applicability of RLP for soft robotics and in the production of soft actuators, a benchmark testing procedure for pneumatic linear actuators is developed. A linear actuator design is manufactured using three techniques: silicone casting, multi-material polyjet printing, and RLP. These actuators are tested for elongation and fatigue behavior through cycling and force. Rapid liquid printed actuators perform comparably for elongation range and exceed the two other methods for repeatability and longevity. A complex, multi-chambered demonstrator is designed from the actuator geometry to showcase the advantages of RLP versus existing silicone printing methods including speed, scale, and part complexity. These results demonstrate the applicability of RLP to the field of soft robotics and pave the way for its further implementation in the manufacturing of soft pneumatic actuators.

Knit fabric with zones of temperature-responsive fi bers (left); knit mask, before and after the personalized robotic tailoring process (right)

This work introduces multi-material liquid printing as an enabling technology for designing programmed shape-shifting silicones. The goal of this research is to provide a readily available, scalable and customized approach at producing responsive 4D printed structures for a wide range of applications. Hence, themethodology allows customization at each step of the procedure by intervening either on the material composition and/or on the design and fabrication strategies for the production of responsive components. A significant endeavour is initiated to develop and engineer two different material systems that enable shape-shifting: silicone-ethanol composites and polyvinyl siloxane swelling rubbers. The printed samples successfully comply with the expected swelling behaviour through a variety of printed test patterns.

Material agency presents a radical shift in design thinking: matter is deemed as the active generator of design. This chapter investigates the potentialities of the synergy between adaptive materials and emergent additive manufacturing techniques. In this context, 4D printing is explored as the tool that enables the material-centered design and fabrication approach. By means of this technique, it is possible to generate stimuli-responsive material systems that can enact self-adaptation of architectural constructs, responding to environmental change with a shape-shifting behaviour. Moreover, a fast, innovative, 3D printing method, Rapid Liquid Printing, allows for this process to potentially scale up to an architectural scale, as it offers the opportunity of quickly printing at large-scales with a wide array of materials, from industrial grade rubbers to responsive silicones.

This paper introduces a method of post-tensioning granular jammed structures to achieve horizontal spans that can be tuned and morphed, as well as withstand significant vertical loads. The paper begins by discussing recent research into jammed structures. The methods section details the development of the fabrication system that led to post-tensioned, jammed—or “superjammed”—structures. The ability to structurally tune, geometrically morph, and instantly reverse superjammed structures is discussed. The performative possibilities of superjammed structures are demonstrated through the prototyping of large-scale spanning typologies. The results of abrasion testing on a superjammed structure are also briefly presented. The outlook section summarizes the benefits of superjammed structures and outlines further research into their limitations, including load capacity, scalability, and weather resistance.

Active Textile Tailoring is a new process for creating smart textiles in which its fibers change shape and structure in response to heat. This adaptive textile can create a new type of sizing customization or aesthetic patterning for the preference of individual customers. This system was developed in collaboration with MIT, Ministry of Supply, Hills Inc. and Iowa State University with support from the federal non-profit Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA).

Liquid Printed Pneumatics is a project developed by the MIT, Self-Assembly Lab and Swiss designer Christophe Guberan that focuses on the 3D printing of pneumatically activated objects. Rapid Liquid Printing (RLP), a new additive manufacturing process developed at the lab, is used to create shape changing devices and objects.