Workmanship of risk: Continuous designing in digital fabrication

Abstract

Research projects exploring the realm of digital fabrication have shifted in recent years from developing novel techniques and outcomes to the development of tools that are part of the design process. The alignment of material systems with digital fabrication technology and tooling processes have led to new terminology such as 'digital craft' and 'digital making'; both terms imply a relationship between craft and digital design and fabrication. Also implied is an intimate relationship between material production, digital tools and CNC fabrication techniques; critical ingredients in contemporary design processes. David Pye's concept of 'the workmanship of risk' is used extensively in current discourse as a means to qualify digital fabrication as craft production. This reading of digital fabrication as craft is limited because the word craft is used as an analogy to draw parallels between craft production and digital fabrication. There is a gap in the knowledge of what contemporary craft practice can bring to digital fabrication as a discourse or more precisely, the mechanism that allows digital fabrication projects to be read as a form of craft practice. This paper suggests that craft practice is rooted in the relationship between material, tools and technique as an intricate workflow within a project; quantifying risk is just a means to assess this relationship. The workflow however can be considered as autopoietic in nature; it is both self-referential and self-making at the same time as continuously designing.