The Eco-Digital Fabrication (EDFAB) research project aimed to investigate how automated prefabrication technologies and off-the-shelf construction products can be employed to disrupt building industry norms. The aim of this research – conducted at the University of Auckland and Unitec Institute of Technology from 2014 onward – was to provide small-to-medium enterprises in the construction industry with a pathway to upskill and increase construction productivity through the use of these processes. The availability of automated machines and easy-to-use fabrication software is increasing dramatically and this can be paired with readily available construction products to produce novel mass-customised housing solutions. The application of basic automated technologies – such as CNC (Computer Numerical Control) routers – allowed researchers to create ‘recipes’ that can be adopted and adapted relatively easily. By no means did the research favour digital manufacture or assembly processes over traditional analogue construction techniques – the goal was to provide logical, productive and accessible blended solutions for greater affordability and flexibility in design. For example, the designed experiments were required to be built from readily available products, and used simple readymade screw fixings rather than digitally produced custom fixings or joining mechanisms. The research project aimed to generate discussion and provide recommendations on how the construction industry might support the adoption of automated prefabrication technology in small-to-medium enterprise (SME).
The cross disciplinary team comprised of students from architecture and construction disciplines working in conjunction with a team of industry professionals including architects, engineers, construction managers, project managers, and lecturers to bring the designed structure, an irregular spiral shape, to completion. The structure is made up of 261 unique glulam beams, to be digitally cut using computer numerical control (CNC) process. However, due to a malfunction with the institutions in-house CNC machine, an alternative hand-cut workflow approach had to be pursued requiring integration of both digital and analogue construction methods. The digitally encoded data was extracted and transferred into shop drawings and assembly diagrams for the fabrication and construction stages of design. Accessibility to the original 3D modelling software was always needed during the construction stages to provide clarity to the copious amounts of information that was transferred into print paper form. Although this design to fabrication project was challenging, the outcome was received as a triumph amongst the architecture community.
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