Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

This paper explores novel pedagogical strategies for beginning digital makers of architecture. Digital makers are those that both design and fabricate digital artifacts in the development of architectural tectonics. In their first digital design course, students explore what David Pye describes as “the workmanship of risk” in the context of contemporary methods of digital design and fabrication. The paper utilizes casestudies of student design projects developed in Portland State University’s School of Architecture. The overall goal is to develop hybridized constructive digital artifacts. For the students this means exploring integrated and inclusive methods of modeling where multiple forms of fabrication categories, including both additive (forming & paneling) and subtractive (sectioning & contouring) are required to enter into a hybridized, indexical relationship with one another. These categories are representations of innovative tectonic systems that, when brought together, form architecture. This approach challenges the common use of digital fabrication to create singular elements that rely on machinery for the precision and the certainty that comes with computer numerical control. Placing contrasting forms of making in direct dialogue increases the risk of failure in the combined, final product and incentivizes students, to paraphrase Malcolm McCullough, to discover the skill and craft located at the meeting point of fabrication tool and digital media.