Integrated Digital Fabrication

The course introduces students to the foundations of the material practice of architecture. It focuses on the creative potential of computational techniques and digital fabrication. The works of architects such as Philibert de I’Orme, Pier Luigi Nervi and Frei Otto provide a frame of reference to investigate the intricate relationships between form, structure, material, and making. The course is based around a proposal for a wooden pavilion that could be built on the Mendrisio campus in summer 2019. All the exercises are self-contained, without any prior knowledge required. The course is conceived as a series of hands-on workshops, moving back and forth between physical tests, digital fabrication and computational design. The students are provided with digital design tools (in the form of plug-ins) that make the specific digital fabrication technologies of the course and their parameters easily accessible by architectural software (Rhino/Grasshopper).