Digital Fabric

Digital Design + Fabrication

Under Senior Instructor Marcel de Lange

Efficiency through mass production is the definitive goal of industrial design. Advancements in digital fabrication applications are allowing todays designers the ability to meet this “supply and demand” production method more efficiently than ever before. Digital fabrication methods also allow us to produce tangible forms which, when conceptualized, appear technically intangible.

Precedent Research

Wexler's, San Francisco, Aidlin Darling Design

Applying the principles of digitally guided mass production and geometric generation to architectural design is what was accomplished in the production of Digital Fabric.

In addition, Digital Fabric was an investigation of digital fabrication through graphical algorithms. Custom built graphical algorithms were used to generate the three dimensional form from a two dimensional, monochrome, image.

One of the major goals throughout the installation’s production was to keep the design process fluent:

1. Design the parametric form - Completed using Rhinoceros 4.0, a three dimensional modeling tool which utilizes free-form non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) modeling methods.

2. Generate the dimensional sections – Completed using Grasshopper beta script 8.0, a generative modeling plug in for Rhinoceros 4.0. Grasshopper uses handler defined graphical algorithms to manipulate control points within an object.

3. Fabricate the object tangibly – Completed using basic CNC milling techniques guided by the sectional line work created from the previous generative step.