Made-to-Measure: Automated Drawing and Material Craft

Abstract

Automation in architectural design and documentation has often been a siloed process where discrete parts are scripted while other production is organized by analog documentation procedures. A made-to-measure, direct-to-drawing process provides an alternative model, leveraging the embodied expertise of skilled trades through digital automation of design and measured drawings. As a practice that questions relationships between digital processes and building, SHoP Architects pursued the joint application of craft knowledge embodied by established trades with computational intelligence manifested through automation in the design of the WAVE/CAVE Pavilion in Milan. With WAVE/ CAVE as a case study, this paper explores the precedence, context, and procedures associated with automation of fabrication and material knowledge in design and drawing production, demonstrating a bridge between analog craft and digital scripting through made-to-measure automated drawing.

Post-tensioned ceramic structures: design, analysis and prototyping

“…The latter method gives the most precise results and yields dimensional tolerances in the range of millimeters. Previous work by the Material Processes and Systems Group (MaP+S) [13] and others [14] demonstrated the design affordances of custom extrusion profiles when further individualized through cuts at variable angles. These studies leveraged the integration of computational tools with computer numerically controlled (CNC) ceramic production processes, but shy away from pursuing more demanding structural applications and instead rely on the stacking of similar elements to create partitionscale wall assemblies.…”

“…Fig 14. Diagram showing maximum combined bending stresses and axial stresses of the Vierendeel Arch.…”

Structural shop drawings at the Sydney Opera House: An instructive model of information flow?

“…The situation has become more sensitive in today's project environments, due to the digitalization of design and project management activities. While exploiting the rhetoric of architects as new master builders on the architecture side (see, for example, Marble [29], or Overall et [30]), and streamlining efficiency on the construction side [31] [32], building information modelling (BIM) platforms open to iterative contributions from all parties are blurring the distinction between professional and nonprofessional inputs to the building project [33].…”