Reconciling Craft with Digital Design: Building a New Infrastructure.

摘要

Digital fabrication has emerged over the past few decades as a powerful tool for constructing architecture that concretely defines complex forms while redefining conventional human understandings of materials. However, far too few studios employ digital fabrication techniques in actual construction. Several known causes are blamed for the limited growth of digital fabrication in practice including high amount of risk, resistance to learning new technologies and processes, and budget constraints. These difficulties need to be overlooked in favor of the true benefits gained from learning, researching, and manipulating digital fabrication techniques beyond model representation: the reconnection of the architect with the act of construction, the discovery of new and different materialities, and more complex yet more informed design solutions. Fellow architect, Lisa Iwomoto, (IwamotoScott Architecture) has expanded beyond the usual raw products of digital fabrication (surface and planes from sheet goods) by incorporating the material operation of "folding." Iwomoto states that "folding" is the most useful digital fabrication technique to architects because it gives structure, volume, and a three-dimensional construction ethic to a two-dimensional plane.* Meanwhile, the firm SHoP envisions the future of digital fabrication within architecture to be essentially linked with reevaluating the format of construction documents. Some of the firm's nontraditional projects have had construction documents that read more like a piece of Ikea furniture's assembly directions rather than traditional plans, sections, and details, which streamlines and, therefore, accelerates construction. With so many inspiring and refreshing digital projects breaking ground, it is only logical to wonder, "What is holding us (the construction industry) back?";This research will produce a design for new civic infrastructure that serves the Waterfront and Central Business District of Cincinnati. Using current downtown development trends and pedestrian traffic patterns, this design intends to provide a pedestrian connector that both serves function as well as decorates the city as a public work of note. The opportunities for weaving useful urban design and digital craft are maximized with this program. Using digital processes of making, the design will attempt to verify the research: that these processes reconnect the architect with the act of construction and making. The design and fabrication attempts to answer the question "How do men put this together" in the best and most accurate way possible.;*Lisa Iwomoto, Digital Fabrications (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009), 62.