CAADRIA 2010 In the next revolution: Digital Building Kits

Materialising designs with digital fabrication
LAWRENCE SASS
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
lsass@mit.edu

B. Dave, A. I. Li, N. Gu, H.-J. Park (eds.), New Frontiers: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia CAADRIA 2010, 545–553. ©2010, Association for Research in Computer-Aided Architectural Research in Asia (CAADRIA), Hong Kong
Source: Cumincad

1. Introduction

A recent article in Wired Magazine entitled “The next Industrial Revolution” should be cause for concern for most people in design and manufacturing fields (Anderson, 2010). Fear of a revolution in manufacturing and design should follow the same concerns we once had over jobs and communication during the internet revolution. The fear is with good reason; so far the internet has shaken the foundation of news organisations and the traditional keepers of information. The United States has seen extermination of many local and international newspapers. Society now trusts information generated by nonexpert sources (blogs) as much as they do expert sources. In many design fields, in particular architecture, the internet has given rise to drafting and rendering industries that generate images and construction documents overnight. (...)

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