Small project: Digital design and fabrication of diffuse reflection building elements

An understanding of digital fabrication techniques is of great significance for the future generation of architects. As with knowledge of materials and tectonics knowledge of new fabrication techniques is essential if their potential is to be fully realised. This knowledge can then even be deployed creatively in design.

We are convinced that teaching these new techniques is primarily achievable if students have direct contact with computer-aided fabrication machines. This means that the ideas and concepts developed by students will not be communicated in the conventional form of drawings, but will be fabricated directly, 1:1, as physical prototypes. Valuable lessons for the design process can be then drawn from these prototypes.

Working on a physical object is significantly more time-consuming and expensive than classical drawing-based courses, and we can at present only do it in the framework of research projects funded by third parties. With the proposed small project we would like to give students the opportunity to address new architectural fabrication techniques and gather practical experience of them.