Digital [Re]Matter: Exploring the Gap Between Designing and Making Through Materially Endorsed Digital Practice

Abstract

If inquiring about the intersection of architects, the tools they use to design with, and the materials they design for, one will find an inherent gap between the acts of designing and making. From the perspective of architectural practice, this is a gap that the advent of the digital age has not been entirely successful in reconciling. As such, Digital [Re]Matter concerns itself with the proposition of materially endorsed digital practice (MEDP) as a means of exploring ways in which material narratives, applications, and agencies can be (re)positioned in the hands of architects once again. A central research project of the Timber Façade Components for Factory-in-a-Box (TFC for FIAB) is used as a vehicle for exploration, and as a means of critiquing MEDP claims through various lenses and scales of focus. Through these efforts, the thesis poses several investigations to evaluate the efficacy of MEDP: from direct leveraging of digital tools and material engagement at the scale of fabrication; to the inquiry of project delivery models in professional practice; and to the systemic contexts that tether design and fabrication efforts to broader scales of material flows. Taken together, these inquiries corroborate several interesting opportunities to continue shedding light on the gap between designing and making in architecture.