In this second project, students again produce a form-finding 'design machine', but one that is both less constrained in its guidelines and providing of more opportunity for individual expression and experimentation. As usual, each design machine progresses through two stages or 'laps'.

In contrast with our first circuit, in which we fabricated a form-finding machine without prior knowledge of its application, nor how the results of this machine were to be translated into an architecture, in this circuit we seek to better understand how foreknowledge of the application of these machines can affect their design. In this circuit, the prompts students have been working with remain fixed. The scale, operation, oblique prompt, and (perhaps with some exception) the program of the project proposed in the first project remain the same. With those parameters in mind, this circuit asks: to what degree can the particular design ideas present in these projects be 'reverse-engineered' into a form-finding device? If we can anticipate the architectural future of the forms our devices will create, how might it affect the design of the devices?

To facilitate a broader exploration of form-finding machines, only some of the guidelines for such a device remain fixed while most are relaxed. Again, we work in teams to design a form-finding device that conforms to the staging area dimensions. Again, this device produces plaster forms by casting into an elastic vessel and exerting a set of forces upon it. However, in this circuit, the elastic vessel is not a standard form, but is instead a product of our design imagination.