Digital Crafting Symposium

An international symposium arranged and hosted by CITA.

Recent years have seen the development of common digital platforms creating new collaborations between architecture, engineering and construction. The consolidation of new interfaces between design and fabrication has lead to a more variegated design practice and the exploration of new structural systems.

The first Digital Crafting symposium asks how the integration of design, analysis and fabrication challenges the knowledge spaces of design, engineering and craft. The symposium presents new models of collaboration between the partners of the built environment and discuss how these can lead to new building practices.

The symposium invites leading practitioners and researchers from fields critical to the profession. The symposium is run in three sessions. Each foregrounds a particular aspect of change, towards which presenters from different yet linked domains build a cross disciplinary perspective.

The DigitalCrafting symposium addresses practitioners, researchers and students from the fields of architecture, engineering and construction. The symposium is open to the public.

Date
Friday 10, December 2010.

Venue
Royal Academy of Fine Arts - School of Architecture
Auditorium 2
Philip de Langes Allee 10
1435 Copenhagen
Denmark Session 1: Computation and Fabrication – How to fabricate?
Digital production techniques are common in today’s craft. It is up to architects and designers to facilitate these. New computational techniques bridge the border between design and production. They give opportunities and establish new means of collaboration. We want to examine concepts that emerge from the unprecedented synthesis of design and production.

Does the complexity of today’s building practice necessitate the direct engagement of architect in buildings fabrication? What are the drivers of change for the future process of building architecture? What are the roles of the players engaged? Do digital production techniques fulfil their promise and where are they leading us to?

Head of Panel
Enric Ruiz Geli ( cloud9 , Barcelona)

Session 2: Computation and Simulation – How to Analyze?
Where design and analysis are traditionally seen as subsequent steps a new set of tools allows the integration of these two. As this may open the field for better and more sustainable design it challenges common design strategies when the designs abstract diagram has to adapt to feedback from the actual environment. We want to discuss different approaches and observations when analysis is interwoven with design and inquire the consequences for the profession.

How do simulation of complex structures and their realization match? How can the early design phase be supported with simulation? What kind of simulation in respect to material, space, use, tectonic can fulfil this? Is there a different quality that enters early design through simulation?

Head of Panel: Azam Khan ( Autodesk Research , Toronto, Canada)

Session 3: Computation and Design- How to design?
Digital platforms open the space of design towards computation. The profession has developed techniques such as matrix transformation and parametric modelling. Yet these have had only limited success in incorporating more complex architectural questions such as use, program or material. We will discuss how recent developments in computation might reach out to this domain.

To what extent do analytical and generative methods open or close connections between the digital and the real? How do they address relationships between intention, geometry, program and material? Head of Panel: Michael Meredith ( mos-office , New York)

The Digital Crafting Network
The Digital Crafting research network investigates how new digital production methods are instigating profound changes in the design and building of architecture. Developing the term digital crafting, the network examines how the maturing of interfaces between the design space of the architect and the production space of the manufacturer is leading to the shaping of a new material practice in architecture.

The network was initiated by CITA with founding members at the Aarhus School of Architecture, the Designschool Kolding, Denmarks Technical University (DTU), The Danish Technological Institute and The Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at the RMIT Melbourne.
The research network is supported by The Danish Council for Independent Research, Humanities.

More Information can be obtained from www.digitalcrafting.dk
Please send inquiries concerning the symposium to martin.tamke@karch.dk

Everybody is welcome.

Martin Tamke, Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Claus Peder Pedersen with Paul Nicholas.

Schedule
10.30 Registration

11.00 Intro to the Digital Crafting Symposium and Network - Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Martin Tamke, Claus Peder Pedersen

11.15 Session 1(1h 25min)
Keynote (30min)
Presentation1 (20min)
Presentation 2 (20min)
Panel Discussion (15min)

13.00 Lunch

13.45 Session 2 (1h 25min)
Keynote (30min)
Presentation1 (20min)
Presentation 2 (20min)
Panel Discussion (15min)

15.25 Coffee break

15.45 Session 3 (1h 25min)
Keynote (30min)
Presentation1 (20min)
Presentation 2 (20min)
Panel Discussion (15min)

17.30 Closing remarks and end of Symposium