Digital Fabrication: Manufacturing Architecture in the Information Age

Abstract

This paper addresses the recent digital technological advances in design and fabrication and the unprecedented opportunities they created for architectural design and production practices. It investigates the implications of new digital design and fabrication processes enabled by the use of rapid prototyping (RP) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) technologies, which offer the pro- duction of small-scale models and full-scale building components directly from 3D digital models. It also addresses the development of repetitive non-stan- dardized building systems through digitally controlled variation and serial dif- ferentiation, i.e. mass-customization, in contrast to the industrial-age para- digms of prefabrication and mass production. The paper also examines the implications of the recent developments in the architectural application of the latest digital design and fabrication technolo- gies, which offer alternatives to the established understandings of architectural design and production processes and their material and economic constraints. Such critical examination should lead to a revised understanding of the historic relationship between architecture and its means of production.