30 Pieces of Plywood:

exploring digital processes of making

Abstract

This paper describes the process and findings related to the implementation of a digitally fabricated installation within the context of an undergraduate third-year architectural design studio, entitled "Thirty Pieces of Plywood.” This title referred not only to the material under consideration, (plywood), but the scope, (thirty pieces), of the installation as well. The installation served as the final four-week project in the fall term for a group of 15 students exploring the potential of using a digital "medium” for design, collaboration and construction. This project required the design teams to tangibly realize a digital form, understand the material nature of architecture in both a digital and material realm and interrogate digital fabrication of a process of design. Fabricating reality became the process of reconciling the digital and the material. The focus of this investigation was to understand a method of digital exchanged afforded by a digital medium, allowing the digital model to become the vehicle for design, fabrication and assembly and in doing so explore the use of the computer in making.