Assembly

Digital fabrication has been theorized by Greg Lynn, Mario Carpo, Bernard Cache, and others as paradigmatic of both digital technology and contemporary commercial culture. This seminar focuses on the capacity digital fabrication opens up for architects to directly engage with manufacturing and construction techniques, to integrate fabricated mockups and material studies into the design process, and to gain greater control over the resultant construction. Using the collective design, production, and assembly of a full-scale pavilion sited on New Haven’s Green as the seminar’s framework, the course begins with a critical evaluation of the discourse surrounding digital fabrication and an intensive examination of a specific building material and its inherent physical properties and fabrication capabilities. Students individually produce design prototypes that by midterm inform a final collaborative design. The project is then developed through component fabrication and assembly studies during the second half of the term. The pavilion is finally produced in-house and assembled on the New Haven Green in May. Limited enrollment.