Architecture

As strAtEgiEs EvolvE using DigitAl mEAns to nAvigAtE DEsign in ArchitEcturE, criticAl ProcEss-bAsED APProAchEs ArE EssEntiAl to thE DiscoursE. the often complex integration of design, analysis, and fabrication through digital technologies is wholly reliant upon a process-basis necessitating the use of a design feedback loop, which reinforces critical decision-making and challenges the notions of how we produce, visualize, and analyze information in the service of production and assembly. central to this processbased approach is the effective and innovative integration of information and the interrogation of material based explorations in the making of architecture. this fabrication 'ecology' forces designers to engage complexity and accept the unpredictability of emergent systems. it also exposes the process of working to critique and refine feedback loops in light of complex tools, methods, materials, site, and performance considerations. in total, strategies for engaging this 'ecology' are essential to accentuate our present understanding of environmental design and theory in relation to digital processes for design and fabrication. this paper recounts a design/fabrication seminar entitled "constructing information" in which architecture students examined an environmental design problem by way of the design feedback loop, where their efforts in applying digital design and fabrication methods were driven explicitly by material and site realities and where their work was executed, installed, and critically explored in situ. these projections raise important questions about how information, complexity, and context overlay and merge, and underscore the critical potential of visual, spatial, and material effects as part of a fabrication-oriented design process.

The paper describes the new implementation of an existing course on digital design (ARCH263) and its contribution to the curriculum of the undergraduate pre-professional architecture program at the Department of Architecture in Ball State University. This course was and continues to be the only required regular course directly related to digital design in the curriculum. The ARCH263 is offered every fall semester to sophomore students and also to career-change students aspiring to continue into the master of architecture program. The new implementation of the ARCH263 was deployed during the last academic semester (2011) for a population of 80 students distributed in three sections in the sopho-Abstract. The paper describes a new implementation of an existing course on digital design and its contribution to the curriculum of the undergraduate pre-professional architecture program at Ball State University. The strategic thinking behind the re-design of this course reflects not only the need to update its content to reflect the state-of-the art in the domain but also responds to a diversified context that exhibitschanging trends due to digital culture, use of digital media in learning and practice, and educational policy. The paper elaborates on these larger contextual elements and describes the new instructional methods implemented through a modular framework of assignments and a multi-layered delivery system. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations for the future improvement, constant assessment, and further development of the digital design course.

In the 21st century, digital information is the medium of exchange between all participants responsible for designing, engineering, making, and assembling architecture and the built environment. Successful projects rely on the effective management and translation of this information. This digital exchange is particularly effective when performance analysis, fabrication constraints, production efficiencies and assembly techniques inform the design team early in the collaborative process via an iterative and non-linear feedback loop. Within these information loops, the amount and type of data and the nature of communication between humans, machines, databases, and software require new ways to organize, visualize, and distribute information. Several case studies of full-scale constructions illustrate the digital exchange—all designed and built by Ball State University students using digital tools and techniques in partnership with industry. Further, we examine specific design and collaboration tools and representational devices used to facilitate the digital exchange from distributed locations. Serving as a test-bed for innovative collaboration, these projects took place over the course of two years as part of design seminars and studios led by the authors. The student-based teams engaged with industry partners to facilitate and effectively negotiate a complex chain of constraints by way of a design-informing feedback loop.

Digital architecture is process-based and reliant upon a conversation between digital visualization, analysis, and production. With the complexity of information generated in process-based digital practices, we need to effectively manage and exchange the information. Feedback loops are integral to this process/product, and thus require extensive management of complex versions of visual and data related information. Quite a lot of scholarly attention has been focused upon highlighting innovative projects using digital fabrication and serial customization. However, there is a scarcity of scholarly work about innovations in visualizing and representing the design data integral in this feedback loop. This paper will examine innovative representational devices such as the matrix, sectioning, layering, bracketing, nesting, and other new forms of organizing, visualizing, analyzing, and simulating complex data, intent upon communicating multiple levels of operations during the design and fabrication process. With a rigorous taxonomy of operative and analytic devices for process-based digital design development, we can begin to outline a trajectory for future evolutions in practice. This writing is an attempt to make a few steps in this direction, and demonstrate some of these new representational ideas in practice.

" The reality of our century is technology: the invention, construction, and maintenance of machines. To be a user of machines is to be of the spirit of this century. " 1-Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 1922 At the beginning of the 21st century—not unlike the previous century that Moholy-Nagy was writing about—design education is continually enhanced, disrupted, and questioned by technology. Arguably, these changes in our design tools and work flows are happening at a quickening pace, and this speed of technological innovation suggests a focus on the role of design education to develop and sharpen the ability to sort, integrate, and disseminate information effectively. 2 In a sense, this underscores the importance of communicating within teams, outside of teams, and to various machines for drawing and other forms of fabrication. This paper will describe a set of projects and exercises within a foundation-level, interdisciplinary design studio that are geared toward thinking about these design/representation/production and processes, mediated by CNC robotic machinery. This parametric-scaffolding requires an understanding about the most optimal and natural workflow.