Nemagari Crafting – Utilizing Bent-root Timber with Mixed-Reality Fabrication

Abstract

This paper discusses the intentions and results of a collaborative workshop aimed at bridging manual and digital epistemologies with new mixed reality (MR) visualizations and fabrication workflows. The use of MR is rapidly gaining momentum in both academic and professional settings, for use in architectural design research and construction on and off site. MR is an extension of digital and computational modeling proficiency that has significantly reshaped the AEC industry, and MR presents a new educational paradigm as this area of expertise becomes more widespread and in demand. By engaging with a historically significant context, the workshop proposes a reconsideration of how digital technologies can interface with manual crafting and tacit knowledge. The workshop acknowledges a definition of culture as a set of communicative acts, and that technology consists not only of the machines, devices and software, but more importantly the relationships between instruments, people, and fields of knowledge. Four MR-guided fabrication workflows were developed, each recognizing that informal technological knowledge has distinct epistemological characteristics that may be productively impacted by holographic intervention.