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2012 | Book

Digital Fabrication Read chapter Read first chapter

Digital Fabrication

Editor: Kim Williams

Publisher: Springer Basel

Book Series : Nexus Network Journal

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

The Winter 2012 (vol. 14 no. 3) issue of the Nexus Network Journal features seven original papers dedicated to the theme “Digital Fabrication”. Digital fabrication is changing architecture in fundamental ways in every phase, from concept to artifact. Projects growing out of research in digital fabrication are dependent on software that is entirely surface-oriented in its underlying mathematics. Decisions made during design, prototyping, fabrication and assembly rely on codes, scripts, parameters, operating systems and software, creating the need for teams with multidisciplinary expertise and different skills, from IT to architecture, design, material engineering, and mathematics, among others The papers grew out of a Lisbon symposium hosted by the ISCTE-Instituto Universitario de Lisboa entitled “Digital Fabrication – A State of the Art”. The issue is completed with four other research papers which address different mathematical instruments applied to architecture, including geometric tracing systems, proportional systems, descriptive geometry and correspondence analysis. The issue concludes with a book review.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Letter from the Editor

Digital Fabrication
Abstract
NNJ editor-in-chief Kim Williams introduces the papers in NNJ vol. 14, no. 3 (Winter 2012).
Kim Williams

Design Analysis: Methods and Results

Prototyping Vitruvius, New Challenges: Digital Education, Research and Practice
Abstract
This paper discusses a key subject of research at ISCTE-IUL. Digital fabrication in architecture offers new perspectives and design innovation in three main areas: academia, research and professional practice. In order to investigate these new challenges and its contributions to architecture in Portugal, a group of multi-disciplinary researchers organized a symposium that presented a state of the art in digital fabrication. The main points were the creation of the Vitruvius FabLab-IUL laboratory and the definition of appropriate new lines of research in digital fabrication.
Alexandra Paio, Sara Eloy, Vasco Moreira Rato, Ricardo Resende, Maria João de Oliveira
Design-Through-Production Formulations
Abstract
Ever since the topic of design and digital fabrication in architecture surfaced ten or so years ago (encouraged by organizations of ACADIA, ECAADE, SIGraDi, and CAADRIA), it has thrived as a productive strategy for advancing the discipline. Clearly, new maps have been charted in architectural discourse that will steer us toward a promising future. Beyond just developing skills to serve new methods of design-through-production, we must now question what ends this methodology serves. This writing is an attempt to chart three potential trajectories inherent in a design-through-production methodology 1) outlining an ethic of production at regional levels in light of the ocean of global information access, 2) investigating the formulation of form inherent in digital design methods, and 3) finding humanist aims through a technological lens. Finally, several pedagocical cases are offered as incremental examples to a collective body of work which applies the design-through-production methodology.
Kevin R. Klinger
Manufacturing Bespoke Architecture
Abstract
At the disposal of today’s architect is an evolving array of interoperable tools and processes that allow the fabrication of design propositions to be increasingly complex, non-standard and adaptive. How are we equipped to deal with such a growing breadth of new potential, and how are the philosophies that underpin this potential being defined? This paper attempts to address what is something of a contemporary dilemma in architecture, as the constraints of industrial standardisation are relaxed. Have the roles of designers and makers changed in a way that we’ve not experienced before, and is a new approach to making architecture emerging?
Bob Sheil
Personal Fabrication: Fab Labs as Platforms for Citizen-Based Innovation, from Microcontrollers to Cities
Abstract
The “digital fabrication” revolution being lived today, both in knowledge creation and in technological developments will become more than a simple formal exploration in architecture and design, or a set of tools exclusive to advanced industries. New tools and processes are becoming more accessible to the masses and are being shared all over the world through Internet platforms, with an open source philosophy, both in software and hardware. The collective mind that is being empowered everyday will define the future of production in the life of mankind and its relation with the environment. The role of architects, engineers, designers and many other professionals, will be reshaped and reconfigured to fit into new models of production and creation. These will need to be supported by new manufacturing platforms, knowledge generating and sharing know-how.
Tomas Diez
Digital Fabrication Laboratories: Pedagogy and Impacts on Architectural Education
Abstract
This paper discusses the role of the new digital fabrication laboratories in architectural education, as an opportunity to introduce practical exploration along with scientific content. It includes a historical review of practical instruction in architecture, a description of digital fabrication labs, and a comparison between pedagogical methods in engineering laboratories and in digital fabrication labs. The paper ends with a reflection about the impact of the introduction of this type of labs on architectural education.
Gabriela Celani
Robotic Assembly Processes as a Driver in Architectural Design
Abstract
Over the last couple of years industrial robots have increasingly gained the interest of architects and designers. Robotics in architecture and construction has mainly been looked at from an engineering perspective during the latter half of the twentieth century, with the main purpose of automating the building process. Today the focus has turned towards realizing non-standardized designs and developing custom fabrication processes. However, the specific characteristics of the robot, which distinguish it from common computer numerically controlled machines, are often overlooked. Industrial robots are universal fabrication machines that lend themselves especially well to assembly tasks. Applied to architecture this resolves to the ability to control and manipulate the building process. As such, applying industrial robots emphasizes construction as an integral part of architectural design. Moreover, designing and manipulating robotic assembly processes can become a driver in architectural design. The potential of such an approach is discussed on the basis of several design experiments that illustrate that by applying such methods, form is not derived from computation or geometry, but from a physical process.
Tobias Bonwetsch

Other Research

Design and Tracing of Post-Byzantine Churches in the Florina Area, Northwestern Greece
Abstract
This paper constitutes an effort to investigate the application of specific design and constructional tracing in post-Byzantine churches situated in northwestern Greece, mainly in the wider area of the town of Florina and the Prespa Lakes, covering a period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Firstly, a review of the relevant previous studies concerning the investigation of proportions and constructional tracing in Byzantine churches is presented. Secondly, a brief analysis of the metric systems of the Byzantine and the Ottoman period is given in order to define the applied modules. Furthermore, the typology of post-Byzantine churches is analysed. The main part of the paper includes the investigation of the constructional grid and the proportions in several plan drawings, in combination with the use of triangular tracing (right triangles). The analysis is also extended to façades and sections, in order to demonstrate the standardisation of the construction. Apart from the above, the application of the golden section in some examples is also examined. Finally, conclusions are drawn concerning the design and application of models and tracing on the construction of post-Byzantine churches.
Aineias Oikonomou
Correspondence Analysis: A New Method for Analyzing Qualitative Data in Architecture
Abstract
This article aims at establishing a new application of the correspondence analysis (CA) method for analyzing qualitative data in architecture and landscape architecture. This method is primarily used in genealogy but is here, for the first time, applied to architectural studies. After introducing a qualitative method based on coding process, a practical guide for using CAQDAS (Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software) is provided. The software NVivo-8 is applied to analyze the data. CA, a multivariate statistical technique, is used to identify the underlying structure of the data and visualize the results. For the purpose of testing this method in practice, the National Garden of Tehran was selected as a case study to provide the data. The focus is on visualizing the similarities between the properties of the National Garden of Tehran and several different garden design styles. Two reliability tests were performed to verify the results, indicating that the National Garden of Tehran has many characteristics similar to those of a typical Baroque garden style. We believe that this new method may have wide application possibilities for studies on architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture.
Farah Habib, Iraj Etesam, S. Hadi Ghoddusifar, Nahid Mohajeri
Method of Modulation and Sizing of Historic Architecture
Abstract
Both the base duodecimal arithmetic and geometrical procedures derived from the diagonal of a square were recurrent resources in the design and construction of past architecture. The hypothesis of a double metric scale justifies the modulation size in buildings throughout a long historical period, using a simple and practical procedure whose fundamentals and characteristics are presented here. Validation by other researchers of the method proposed, would be a milestone in the history of the proportion of architecture, a step towards gaining knowledge of a common metric system used since ancient times in the construction of important buildings.
Francisco Roldán
Descriptive Geometry: From its Past to its Future
Abstract
Descriptive geometry is the science that Gaspard Monge systematized in 1794 and that was widely developed in Europe, up until the first decades of the twentieth century. The main purpose of this science is the certain and accurate representation of three-dimensional shapes on the two-dimensional support of the drawing, while its chief application is the study of geometric shapes and their characteristics, in graphic and visual form. We can therefore understand how descriptive geometry has been, on the one hand, the object of theoretical studies, and, on the other, an essential tool for designers, engineers and architects. Nevertheless, at the end of the last century, the availability of electronic machines capable of representing three- dimensional shapes has produced an epochal change, because designers have adopted the new digital techniques almost exclusively. The purpose of this paper is to show how it is possible to give new life to the ancient science of representation and, at the same time, to endow CAD with the dignity of the history that precedes it.
Riccardo Migliari

Didactics

Material Customization: Digital Fabrication Workshop at ISCTE/IUL
Abstract
This paper describes the workshop which took place during the international symposium “Digital Fabrication — a State of Art”, which took place at the School of Technology and Architecture ISCTE-IUL, on 15-16September 2011. Its main goal was to introduce a group of about twenty people to the use of digital fabrication in architecture, in a country where these technologies are not yet fully implemented in architecture schools and curricula.
José Pedro Sousa

Book Review

Book Review
Abstract
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was one of the universal thinkers of the late Renaissance who was at home in both of the “two cultures”, the sciences and the humanities, although today we think of him almost exclusively as a scientist, and in a still more restricted sense, as an astronomer. Mark Peterson’s recent study, Galileo’s Muse, does much to broaden our conception of the man known as the “the Father of modern science”.
Kim Williams
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Digital Fabrication
Editor
Kim Williams
Copyright Year
2012
Publisher
Springer Basel
Electronic ISBN
978-3-0348-0582-7
Print ISBN
978-3-0348-0581-0
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-0582-7

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