Workshops precede the seminar giving hands-on practical knowledge and access to the toolsets involved in the topic. These tools are both digital and crafts oriented. The workshop are structured around the invitation of a guest researcher that introduces a given technique and technology to the network allowing the network participants immersion in a given set of research questions, techniques, computational problems and tools.
Consequences of digital fabrication on wood constructions are investigated in this workshop. A focus is set on the logic of the joint. The starting point of our discussion will be a universal model interpreting a workpiece’s production process as flows of matter, energy and information. Implementing this method, we will look into history of technology to find relations between contemporary production technology and the respective joinery in timber construction. This retrospect will be backed up with examples of manual workmanship, industrial interchangeability and individual digital fabrication, including recent work by the workshop guest. Departing form a thorough understanding of production technology and its impact on architecture and products we will try to sketch a vision for future development.
Invited workshop guest:
Christoph Schindler, schindlersalmerón
schindlersalmerón dedicate their work to the development of parametric objects at the interface of architecture and product design. Well known examples of their approach are the parametric coat rack «Kleiderleiste»—one of very few customizable products in the market—and the awarded wood construction principle «Zipshape». The firm is interested in both digital fabrication and traditional workmanship.
Dr. Christoph Schindler’s experience ranges from intelligent design objects to developing realization strategies for large complex building projects in his former position at ETH Zurich and designtoproduction. In his writing he seeks to embed contemporary development into a broad historical understanding of production technology.
The workshop investigates the tectonics of the uniform surface. Digitally informed architecture are often presented as continuous surfaces morphing between their structural loads. The workshop investigates how digital fabrication can lead to new principles of construction for their realisation. The workshop investigates ways of thinking the relationship between the joint and the cast, the mould and the form, the mono-material and the composite.
The workshop investigates now the introduction of a digital platform for design and fabrication introduces a new mathematical depth to the drawing plane. Here, conditional statements, loops and iterations become part of the design language. By exploring the structures by which this logic is shaped, the workshop queries how concepts such as generative design and emergence can lead to new ways of thinking organisation and programme in architectural design.
The workshop explores textile logics for thinking structural systems. With a focus on self bracing systems, the workshop will investigate how friction based structures can be implemented at architectural scale. Learning from early practitioners such as Shukov and geodetic structures the aim is to explore how these principles can lead to new structural thinking and what the opportunities are for their integration in architectural design practice.
