Digital Fabrication in Architecture

Nick Dunn

• Publisher: Laurence King Publishing
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781780673899
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

With the increasing sophistication of CAD and other design software, there is now a wide array of means for both designing and fabricating architecture and its components. The proliferation of advanced modelling software and hardware has enabled architects and students to conceive and create designs that would be very difficult to do using more traditional methods.

The use of CAD technologies in the production of physical models, prototypes and individual elements is increasingly widespread through processes such as CAD/CAM, CNC milling and rapid prototyping. This translation of computer-generated data to physical artefact can also be reversed with devices such as a digitiser, which traces the contours of physical objects directly into the computer.

This book focuses on the inspiring possibilities for architecture that can be explored with all the different technologies and techniques available for making complete designs or their components.

PART 3 STRATEGIES

1. INTRODUCTION

2. NON-LINEARITY AND INDETERMINACY

3. DIGITAL TOOLING

4. CONTOURING

5. FOLDING

6. FORMING

7. SECTIONING

8. TILING

1. Introduction

Having discussed the range of digital design tools and fabrication techniques available to the architectural designer, it is now time to examine how and why these may be brought together to provide a strategic approach. Therefore, this section will discuss in more detail how digitally controlled manufacturing processes can be used as both generative and representational tools, and applied to develop intelligent systems for the designer. By comparison with the previous section, we will now focus on the strategic implementation of tools and techniques that enable the generated design and integrated fabrication methods to be maximized for architecture. Key terminology will be presented and defined along with the basic theory behind the different system approaches. Like any design medium, digital making has its own set of possibilities and constraints. The potential to bridge the gap between simulation and construction affords designers access to previously unchartered territory between design and making. The advantages of different techniques, alongside their implications and limitations on modes of inquiry, will be described in order to allow readers to optimize their design methodologies and creative practice. This section will seek to contextualize the application of different techniques in an interdisciplinary manner.

The complexity of architecturaldesign tasks for which robotics may be used is still an area of experimentation and research rather than widespread practice. Sophisticated arrangements of standard components or the fabrication of non-standard elements are the primary applications of this technology at present.

A key aspect with digital technologies is that practitioners reconsider the way in which they design, both at a conceptual level and with respect to the components used to construct their ideas – see these non-standard ‘bricks’, which have been intricately laser cut to connect together.

It is important to remember that the design data is the construction data, so to achieve the most from these techniques it is important for designers to embrace a holistic understanding of geometry, fabrication techniques and material properties.

Innovative contemporary architecture often absorbs the digital workflow as an integral loop within its design process, providing material and spatial effects that may belie the sophistication and subtleties incorporated into the design – whilst others (as here) reveal their methods in a more explicit manner.

2. Non-linearity and indeterminacy

By now, it will be evident that digital technologies have been transformative in the design process of architecture and present a number of new paradigms for generating and fabricating creative ideas. Core to these changes in the behaviour and approach of the designer using such technologies are the notions of ‘indeterminancy’ and ‘non-linearity’. In this book’s first section, we encountered the concept of ‘emergence’ through the process of morphogenesis, and how this characteristic is being embraced by some designers seeking to develop sophisticated, though not necessarily predictable, results. Because of the willing acceptance by these designers of this unknown nature and its respective outcomes, exciting, unforeseeable and novel concept developments become manifest. The determinism previously endemic in traditional design methods has, through engagement with digital technologies, given way to a ‘release’ analogous to the creative mental leaps a designer experiences. However, this does not presage a completely random and uncontrollable approach. Instead, what is being developed may be referred to as ‘precise indeterminancy’. Seemingly contradictory, this term describes a design process that allows a generative system to run independently but within clearly defined rules or constraints specified by the designer via the information entered into the system. As a direct result of this type of system, the designer’s behaviour shifts from ‘maker’ to ‘editor’ as preferences are used to decide which emergent forms are appropriate in relation to the desired technical criteria. If this sounds disconnected and clinical, then we might consider Branko Kolarevic’s description: ‘The generative role of new digital techniques is accomplished through the designer’s simultaneous interpretation and manipulation of a computational construct in a complex discourse that is continuously reconstituting itself – a “self-reflexive” discourse in which graphics actively shape the designer’s thinking process.’²¹

Digital technologies therefore provide dynamic, critical and analytical modes of inquiry rather than open-ended, ill-defined and simply explorative tools and techniques. The process of form finding intrinsic to this approach reflects the inherently non-linear nature of such design systems as they search through multiple variations. Such methods are not cumulative in the conventional sense, nor are they easily discernible through their various components since they are directed by a complex set of relations and mutual dependencies.

Digital making does not merely provide an expanded ‘toolkit’ for architects, but may represent a complete methodological approach to practice. The highly innovative, engaging projects by Studio Gang Architects, such as their design for South Pond at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, demonstrate the capability of a digital approach and its application. Inspired by tortoise shells, the pavilion has a laminated structure of prefabricated, bentwood members and a series of interconnected fibreglass pods that provide surface curvature.

3. Digital tooling

In this book so far, we have encountered a wide range of digital design and fabrication approaches that may enhance or replace traditional aspects of the architectural design process. For the inexperienced designer these are valuable routes into the world of digital technologies, as they afford the integration of new modes of inquiry with more familiar ones. However, in order to explore the deeper potentialities of digital design and making it is helpful to consider some key aspects in relation to the designer’s intentions. This is particularly relevant in CAD/ CAM processes since the choice of fabrication explicitly and implicitly informs design ideas. With this in mind, it is useful to consider the most appropriate application at the very beginning of the design process. As we shall see, there are a number of key ways of integrating digital technologies to achieve the desired results. This process is sometimes referred to as ‘tooling’, defined as ‘the provision an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• A brief history
• Fabricating architecture in the digital age
• About this book
• Getting started
• Digital tools and machines for fabrication
• Generation
• Integration
• Strategies
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Index
• Acknowledgments
• Note