Future Wood: Innovation in Building Design and Manufacturing (original) (raw)

Abstract

Wood and tools. They bring to mind the cabinetmaker’s factory, boat builder’s jigs, the residential construction site, concrete forms and the amateur’s workshop. Each is at the end of conception, where already set ideas become reality. Mostly what is made are the ideas of others-the hand holding the tool is not that of the designer. The history of design would appear to force such a separation between design and its realization. Modern artifacts are complex and demand specialized knowledge and machines for their production. It is easy, or at least expedient, for designers to leave tools and materials to others. Sadly, the common view that designers are ungrounded in practical reality may be simple historical necessity. This book is a bridge. Its contributors, designers all, show how new tools can span the historical gap between thought and hand, between idea and materiality. Contemporary computer-aided design systems and digital fabrication machines allow us to bend the process of design in on itself, to connect its start and finish. Both computation and physical machines are tools for developing the substance of design. Computational tools enliven the sketch. Once modeled inside a computer, a sketch becomes plastic. We develop, refine and adapt it to context. We create alternative sketches in the hundreds. Digital fabrication makes these sketches physical, as models, prototypes and built form. Th e loop closes as we use the physical sketch to inform the world of ideas. And the world of ideas changes as we learn the consequences of our design choices.

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