Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques (Architecture Briefs)

Contributing to the discussion on the role of digital and emerging technology in the discipline of architecture, Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques documents a series of recent projects with an integral relationship between the act of designing and the act of making. Iwamoto organizes these works in a manner that draws commonalities between their material, tectonic, and spatial innovations, presenting these independent projects as a coherent collective that is innovating architectural thinking, teaching, making, and designing. This curation captures the vanguard spirit of the 1:1 experiments by focusing on smaller-scale projects (fabricated within the past five years, and by relatively young, small firms or even students,) as their prescribed restrictions (the availability of space, budget, materials, and/or tools) promotes innovating standard, accessible materials and machinery to achieve a new, unanticipated affect.Throughout Digital Fabrications, the emphasis is design + fabrication. Iwamoto excludes purely tectonic projects, as well as unbuilt designs, as the true ethos of these experiments in architectural design/fabrication is how the two processes integrate and inform each other. The projects included are in continuous contact with material and fabrication techniques during the various stages of development. The design (and designer) works in congruence with the computer, as well as the tools and methods of fabrication, to conceive and realize their work. The included projects exemplify how open, synchronous communication between design and manufacturing can, and has been, expanding spatial, material, and tectonic possibilities within the discipline.Written for "anyone who wants to know how digital fabrication works, why architects use it, and how it promotes innovative design" Iwamoto documents the design process, as well as the material and fabricating techniques used, in order to disseminate these concepts. The structuring of the book, the categorization of projects by their means of their fabrication reinforces the idea that tooling and material techniques are an integral process of the final design. Each of the five parts (sectioning, tessellating, folding, contouring, and forming,) begins with a brief definition of the operation, its historical precedents, its most useful application, as well as its more innovative applications. It is here where Iwamoto takes the opportunity to cite built larger and smaller scale projects, putting the featured projects into a larger context of work while also emphasizing their ingenuity and inventiveness.The projects featured in Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques are eliminating the boundary between conception and actualization, and are innovating solutions to recurring architectural problems. The digitization of the fabrication process has challenged designers to not only redefine the uses of traditional building materials, but to also redefine the limits of space, and redefine their role in the life of the design.

Decent book on digital fabrication techniques. My only gripe is that it is more like a project catalog than an actual book. More specifically, the writing is almost purely descriptive in support of the images. I got excited reading the introduction, expecting to be immersed in a discourse regarding the social, spatial and cultural implications of digital fabrication in architecture, based on deeper analysis and the author's own reflection on this subject. However, it turned out the text is somewhat redundant as they often only serve to describe what's in the images and the various methods used to achieve the formal effects. If you have been in architecture school, there is nothing new about that. Iwamoto takes us through a myriad of projects for each technique, but fails to engage the reader in a deeper discussion. In that sense, Digital Fabrications is quite clearly aimed towards readers who are not familiar with digital fabrication.Lastly, the graphic design is abysmal for a design-oriented book. Nothing lines up with anything and the images are scattered over each page as if they were just dropped and forgotten - some being too small, some too big - , while the text nests itself into whatever white space is left over.In conclusion, Digital Fabrication serves as an excellent reference source for one's design library, but is less successful as a visual and discursive product.

This book from Lisa Iwamoto and the Princeton Architectural Press is enchanting. It is a publication you want to savor across a span of time, because one cannot possibly take in the beauty of it in one sitting. The miracles and potential of digital era design are revealed in this slender paperback which opens the interested eye and mind to new worlds of possibility. The copy this writer ordered was a previously owned one and arrived in near-mint condition.

I work very thoroughly with computer programs that are capable of producing these fantastic environments and I am still blown away by the types of works I could produce.This is like my bible to the digital process world. If I have any questions on how I should approach something, I would see to this book first for inspiration if there was a way to make it more simple and elegant.Anybody working with 3-Dimensional programs (Rhinoceros / Maya / Autodesk / Solidworks / etc.) should get this IMMEDIATELY.

I enjoyed the book as it was a pretty good introduction to the prolific ways a designer can think within digital space. It then give clear examples of each of those seperate processes. A goof launching pad for those interested in digital design and fabrication.

love it

This is a great little book that will take you through all the different ways digital dabrication can be done considerig all the fabrication tools. The concepts are very well explained as well as the case studies.

Wish the book was a larger format with more images

Loved it. As a resource for teaching, it's sublime...beautifully put together, photographed and explained. My students are in awe, and rightly so.

Es un libro dotado de una gran variedad de proyectos experimentales (más no siempre funcionales) que te ayuda a comprender los alcances originados por las nuevas tecnologías, se dota de mucho texto y fotografías misceláneas, pero ninguna explicación ni enseñanza profunda. Es unn buen libro para darle un vistazo de vez en cuando y generar o mejorar ideas, pero no funciona como una guía esencial en la fabricación digital, ni en el diseño digital.