Santino Medina currently works for Gehry Technologies (GT) as a Senior Project Manager. He’s trekked the world over for project integration, advanced digital, construction technologies and methodologies. He’s consulted for GT in Los Angeles for Frank Gehry on projects like the Brooklyn Arena, on the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City with Fernando Romero and the Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi with AECOM, for Laing O’rourke in Hong Kong and is now managing 2 projects for Disney; the entire BIM integration for the Shanghai Disney Resort as the overall Parkwide BIM Manager and an incoming future project. He aids in implementing advanced technological processes, such as 3D Scanning and Unmanned Aircraft Systems analysis. Additionally, he is collaborating with the Shanghai Disney Research Lab to develop future building methodologies. He believes that the hybrid integration of Man, Technology and Robotics is not the future, but the Now. In this presentation Santino talks about the Invention of the Sensor. We are able to record real-time sensory data from the world around us with UAVs, CCTVs and various other technologies that transform the physical into the digital. How do we as Architects utilize that information to improve our designs, to improve our world?

15. Tonight I might ask more questions than present actual work, as this has become more of an
exploration of my own personal thesis, than a presentation.
The Invention of the Sensor was also the Invention of Sensory overload. (slide 1 then 2)
The cultural theorist, Paul Virilio believes that with every new incarnation of technology, it brings
with it the inherent antithesis of that technology. For Virilio, the invention of the ship was also the
invention of the shipwreck, the invention of electricity led to electrocution, the invention of every
technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.
(slide 3)
We are able to record real-time sensory data from the world around us with UAVs, CCTVs and
various other automated sensors that transform our physical world into the digital. (slide 4)
How then do we as Architects, designers, and engineers utilize that data to improve our
designs, to improve our world?
As we go deeper into the fields of digitization and parametrics, how do we delve into the murky
waters of transitioning from the digital to the real world of construction? For me, it’s always
been to look at the problem holistically. (slide 5)
I’d like to examine the utilization of technology, robotics, and man in particular on the
construction site in general terms, as many of the things I work on are top secret. If we as an
industry, keep exploiting traditional means and methods in a world with waning resources, we
will fail ourselves and our population. So how do we stop that process? Simple, we need to stop
building.
Instead, we need to start assembling. (slide 6) We need to employ new technologies that bring
sustainability and predictability.
In the words of Peter Thiel, “Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n,
adding more of something familiar, (slide 7)
but every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1.”
Or more aptly put by Disney’s Chief Scientist Ben Schwegler, “You don’t have 30 years’
experience, you’ve just been doing it the same way 30 times.”
So what does this say about the construction industry? For me it begins to put more
responsibility on collaborative efforts.
If we look at Singapore’s government, they are currently requiring and investing in DfMA, which
is design for manufacture and assembly for all new buildings, because they have realized that
assembling building components in factories and installing them on site finished is faster and
more predictable. (slide 8)
But this solution has been around for the past 100 years. 1 to n. (slide 9)
Sensors 0 to 1. Architecture Schools and research labs from Zurich ETH, MIT, SCI-Arc and
more are individually and at times; collaborating with each other on new methodologies to
Architect.
Imagine if we had swarms of robot bees flying the site to give immediate feedback of air quality,
while overhead a UAV scanned the site to give a full 3D status of the construction site.
While other larger UAVs worked in sync to deliver and help install building components. In the
distance we can see a small army of kukas cutting and printing smaller components as workers
come to pick up the days parts to assemble them in their appropriate sequence. (slide 10)
(slide 11) (slide 12)

16. All of these things are coming to a convergence. Robotics and Technology will always be able
to algorithmically assemble an object, but it will always be a Person who renders its beauty.
The singularity, will not happen. (slide 13)
The hybridization of Man, Technology and Robotics is not the future, but the Now.
Thank you.