Later this year Innovation Design Engineering (IDE) Masters Programme celebrates 40 years since this pioneering collaboration between the Royal College of Art and Imperial College was created. As part of the RCA2020 Show, Assa Ashuach's talk followed by a conversation with the RCA students and Savina Torrisi is an early celebration of the programme anniversary, part of the IDE40 series of live events.

Assa Studio practice and research are very much about innovation and the development of new industrial design methodologies within digital design and manufacturing.

In the centre of the Studio’s developments is the virtual ‘life’ of an object, before it is physically produced.

In 2004, Assa Studio presented the Osteon chair, an object with a ‘bio intelligent’ bone-like structure. They have used a 3D AI algorithm that was ‘Growing’ optimised internal microstructures for the first time.

Recently, Assa Studio has been looking into the internal 3D growth of a very fast-growing breed of bamboo. The bamboo is ‘learning as it is growing’, this means that its structural internal 3D morphology is constantly changing, based upon a kind of inherited bio intelligence and sensory systems. The new STEM45° objects collection were designed using the actual bamboo 3D microstructure together with Assa's personal aesthetics impressions and a line of 3D automated scripts.

It is opening the discussion around future industrial design and architecture at both large and small scales, where automated processes will be fed by a combination of human and biological intelligence, designing a new type of tool-path for the robots to follow.