ABSTRACT
Conceptual framework e turn of the century saw the emergence of a new way of thinking about digital production that one decade later is ready for a change. Developments in techniques and discourse on digital design from the late 1990s reaching to the current date centered on a number of concepts and methodologies borrowed from associated elds such as philosophy, mathematics and biology, and then translated and transformed into architectural ideas that inform the academic and professional practice of the production of the built environment. With this translation comes a new language that must engage not only the avant-garde of architectural theory and experimentation, but also the rich tradition of the academy and practice that provides the basis for cultural and practical production. In this chapter, we seek to explore two tendencies involved in the transition from digital design to digital production in the lens of the application of research into built projects and materiality: the concept of continuity and the method of operative uniformity. One of the initial concepts intertwined with digital design was that of continuity, developed from philosophical reections on calculus as well as the new capabilities of computer soware to readily develop curvature in three dimensions. Continuity in form engages the immediate problem of the boundary condition, which has plagued digital projects with issues of where and how to terminate systems or projects (Figure 15.1). What began as a celebration of potentials in computational geometry has encountered the diculties that
abstraction has always dealt with in resolving materiality. e single form of the computer model must engage the reality of building components, shipping sizes, material form availability, joinery and the host of discrete component details. e new abilities of the computer when developed into physical reality took on an operative language: folding, sectioning, tessellating, and other operations became form generators. is vocabulary was considered a direct physical extension of the computational operations embedded in the soware and simulation techniques. New methods of constructing were developed to engage this process, resulting in novel forms and assemblies. However, the relentless uniformity of the operative technique has become normative in that a construction (be it building, pavilion, installation or model) oen relies on one sole operative assembly type, defeating the material purpose of detailing and variety (Figure 15.2).
