Week 19

Invention, intellectual property, and income

Week assignments

1. Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project. ✔
2. Complete your final project, tracking your progress:
   • what tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain? ✔
   • what’s working? what’s not? ✔
   • what questions need to be resolved? ✔
   • what will happen when? ✔
   • what have you learned? ✔
3. Prepare drafts of your summary slide (presentation.png, 1920x1080) and video clip (presentation.mp4, 1080p HTML5, < ~minute, < ~25 MB) and put them in your website’s root directory. ✔

Dissemination Plan for “The Bending Bench”

The primary objective of my final project, “The Bending Bench”, is educational. It has been conceived as a tool to enhance the understanding of fundamental concepts in the structural analysis of isostatic systems, particularly bending moments. It is mainly targeted at first-year architecture and engineering students. Given its pedagogical purpose, I do not intend to commercialize the project or obtain any financial benefit from its exploitation.

To maximize its educational impact and dissemination, I have devised the following plan:

Open Documentation As expected for a Fab Academy final project, all design files, source code, assembly instructions, and calibration procedures will be published under an open-source license. This will allow educators, students, and institutions to freely replicate, adapt, and improve the system. I will make every effort to keep the documentation well-organized and clearly explained to ensure easy interpretation and reuse.

Short-term Residencies in Architecture Schools Starting in September, if everything goes as planned, I intend to organize a series of hands-on workshops at various architecture schools. These sessions will combine theoretical explanations of structural behavior with collaborative construction of new versions of The Bending Bench, tailored to each institution’s needs. This initiative aims to spark students’ interest in structural analysis and help them overcome their fear of structures, while introducing them to digital design and fabrication tools.

Development of a Portable 1:10 Scale Model To facilitate transport and live demonstrations in classrooms or academic events, I plan to develop a fully functional 1:10 scale version of the bench. This compact version will replicate the behavior and visualization capabilities of the full-scale model, allowing real-time interpretation of structural responses. I have already started building it with my students in the Singular Structures course, although due to the demands of the Fab Academy, it is not yet complete. I hope to finish it soon.

Integration into Academic Curricula. I will promote the integration of The Bending Bench as a permanent educational tool in architecture schools, especially in introductory structural design courses. It could be used both as a demonstration device during lectures and as a platform for project-based learning and experimentation.

Dissemination through Publications and Academic Conferences I intend to share the results and educational methodology of this project through academic articles and conference presentations related to architecture education, digital fabrication, and structural pedagogy.

This dissemination plan reflects my commitment to open knowledge and to improving structural understanding through interactive learning experiences, advocating for gradual and engaging educational strategies.

Licensing

I’ve decided to license my project under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. This means that:

• Derivatives and adaptations of my work may be shared, provided they are distributed under the same license. This ensures that any modified versions uphold the same principles of openness and share-alike reuse.

• Commercial use is not permitted, ensuring that the project remains accessible for educational, personal, and other non-commercial purposes only. This reflects my current goal of developing the project for personal use and documentation, with no immediate plans for commercialization.

I have consulted the following link for more information about this type of license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Why CC BY-NC-SA 4.0? I’ve decided to license my project under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license because it reflects the nature and intention behind its development. It ensures proper attribution, restricts commercial exploitation, and fosters the values of open knowledge and shared improvement.

This type of license is especially appropriate for my work, which has a clear educational purpose. The project is open-source and designed to contribute to learning and innovation, particularly within academic and architectural contexts.

Final thoughts

Final reflections

Only one week remains before the final presentation of my project. The learning journey I have undertaken since January has been extraordinary. The Fab Academy is just the beginning of many things yet to come. The knowledge, work ethic, and dedication invested throughout these weeks have been an exceptional training ground to tackle any future challenge. That said, learning never stops.

During the closing session of the BIM Education and Research track at the EUBIM International CoConference in Valencia, I shared with the attendees three simple principles for lifelong learning:

• Show genuine interest.
• Stay attentive to what is happening around you.
• Always keep your enthusiasm alive — age is just a number.