Paulina Pytka Virtual Environments Module 3 Architecture in the Digital Age - Design and Manufacturing Branko Kolarevic Briefly outline the various digital fabrication processes. Explain how you use digital fabrication in your design? The main forms of digital production discussed by Kolarevic include three-dimensional scanning, digital fabrication, two-dimensional fabrication, subtractive fabrication, additive fabrication and formative fabrication. Three dimensional scanning is the inverse of computer aided manufacturing. Essentially, a physical model is scanned to create a “point cloud” which then enables its translation into a digital model. Digital fabrication on its own corresponds to the capabilities of the manufacturing equipment. This means that designers are able to work more closely with the technologies that bring their designs to life. Two-dimensional fabrication, by contrast to three-dimensional fabrication, involves two-axis motion cutting such as that of laser cutters and water jets. Their major limitations concern the thickness of materials that they can cut through. Subtractive fabrication employs three-axis motion cutting to shape a solid piece of material into the desired form by a means of removing volume. Additive fabrication is the opposite. It involves incremental assembly of the layers that constitute the design. Finally, formative fabrication focuses on the concept of deformation whereby a shape can be transformed through the application of heat or steam to its material. The outcome is usually of a bent nature, exploiting the elasticity of a given material. The digital fabrication technique selected for my group’s design was two-dimensional as well as additive. In the fabrication of the panels, their underlying panel and fold concept meant that we wanted their three dimensional quality to emerge from manual folding techniques much like that in origami. Subsequently, the laser cutter was used only to ensure that each panel was identical so that a perfectly neat outcome could be achieved. Contrastingly, the way that the mounting piece was made could be described as being additively fabricated seeing as it involved wrapping the model in multiple layers of tape until a relatively thick and rigid form resulted.
Digital fabrications: architectural and material techniques Lisa Iwamoto Describe one aspect of the recent shift in the use of digital technology from design to fabrication? How does the fabrication process affect your second skin project? Modelling three-dimensional forms digitally involves the use of NURBS and meshes. The use of NURBS has particularly revolutionised the degree of curvature that can be obtained within a design. Prior to their introduction, designers relied on meshes to approximate curving surfaces using geometric shapes. Essentially, the result was not necessarily perfectly smooth, however, this was controlled by the resolution of the tessellation. Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes illustrate the effectiveness of triangular shapes in approximating curvature. This inspired my group’s exploration of triangular based panels. Ultimately, it was discovered that a “Y” shape resembling the intersecting point of three triangles was most effective for creating a pattern that could mould to the contours of the human
body and thus, allow our panels to be precisely arranged.