Abstract:
The research within this document seeks to investigate and engage with simple digital fabrication technology such as laser cutters and CNC routers to produce architectural products. In turn, technology is allowing young architectural practitioners to engage with social fabrication activities. Questions, however, remain as to what extent the designer-maker will be required to acquire the necessary skill, organisation and knowledge to support social building activities. The internet is providing consumers access to a variety of services to allow the general public to be directly involved in production activities. Everyday consumer objects can be customised at mass, with a large variety of established industries such as fashion and print publishing being affected. The field of architecture is not immune to such change, with social digital-building schemes such as WikiHouse and Click-Raft threatening to challenge the way consumers may converse with the production of architecture. These schemes tend to take advantage of standardised 'off the shelf' materials such as plywood and file-tofactory CNC-router manufacturing processes to create custom components for assembly by volunteer labour. The research presented within this paper seeks to investigate how this shift towards digital fabrication and self-assembly is affecting the relationships between designers, the makers of architecture and their clients. It adopts a 'research with creative practical component' methodology, using four projects. The projects explore the use of social capital for building activities with the use of simple automation technology to design and fabricate creative outputs. In keeping with the community digital fabrication building schemes, the use of CNC routers and 'off-the-shelf' material will be specified to create a large majority of the architectural artefacts. Each individual design-build project will be required to be tested to ensure specified materials, design details and fabrication processes are well suited to the skill of the individual or group end user. A majority of the testing will be prototyped through the use of virtual simulations and rapid digitally prototyped mock-ups. If deficiencies are found during the evaluation process, amendments can be quickly made to the digital model for successive iterative tests. The four creative schemes have been produced for either a client or an industry exhibition. The first project to be discussed is the custom CNC plywood flat-pack interior fit-out 'V-Fuels Project'. The second and third interior fit-out projects, the 'Tech Future Lab Reception Space' and the 'Look Pop-up Store', will investigate how to produce aesthetically and materially similar bespoke modular prefabricated units with different sources of experienced labour. The fourth project, 'EDFAB', is a scheme that focuses on a series of iterative modular housing prototypes. The research outputs have been disseminated in academic journals and conference proceeding. The findings suggest that rather than a simple technological advancement, there is a need for social, cultural and organisation change, which may be more significant and challenging than the adoption of technology. Automation can, however, allow social building schemes to become more ambitious in respect to quality, efficiency and aesthetic complexity. There are opportunities for the designer-maker to participate in both sides of the automated spectrum to create a quality architecture to bridge the gap and provide a social design project to organise and direct end user building activities. There is also the opportunity to design bespoke virtual components for subsequent digital printing and assembly by volunteer labour. The intentions of the designer need to consider the desires, expectations and ability of the user for successful outcomes to be produced. There is also a need for technical knowledge, fabrication experience and management skill to adequately design a tailored process for any given contextually driven brief. The various forms of prototyping employed within the design process allowed the end user to tactilely provide the designers with useful feedback about their ability, the appropriate specifications of design detail and aesthetic finish. The consequences of bypassing the prototyping process will result in unnecessary production time, frustration and diminished quality.