Architecture and Digital Fabrication (Thesis Elective)

Abstract

Advance in technology revolutionizes design and fabrication processes within architecture. Digital fabrication allows immediate production from design data. The architect as author of these data takes a key role in this development.This course focuses on strategies for architectural production by means of algorithmic design tools and computer controlled fabrication methods.

Objective

The goal of the „Wahlfacharbeit“ is the in depth analysis of a specific topic in the field of digital design and fabrication. The students should develop a personal, algorithmic design system till fabrication. A theoretic placement of the work within the current research discourse is desirable.

Content

We use the term digital materiality to describe an emergent transformation in the expression of architecture. Materiality is increasingly being enriched with digital characteristics, which substantially affect architecture’s physis. Digital materiality evolves through the interplay between digital and material processes in design and construction. The synthesis of two seemingly distinct worlds – the digital and the material – generates new, self-evident realities. Data and material, programming and construction are interwoven. This synthesis is enabled by the techniques of digital fabrication, which allows the architect to control the manufacturing process through design data. Material is thus enriched by information; material becomes “informed.” In the future, architects’ ideas will permeate the fabrication process in its entirety. This new situation transforms the possibilities and thus the professional scope of the architect.

Resources