Disruptive innovation is a term used to describe a technological advancement that improves products or services in ways that the market does not expect, typically by lowering price or designing for a different set of consumers (e.g. the innovation of downloadable media disrupted the way we access music, books and video, causing companies like Blockbusters, Borders to close their doors and making the music industry re-think the way it distributes music). 3D printing has emerged as a technology that has the potential to disrupt industrial manufacturing, but can it disrupt current modes of architectural practice? Companies like D-Shape and scientists like Behrokh Khoshnevis are creating methods to 3D print buildings. Materialise, the world’s largest rapid prototyping service bureau, works directly with architects to “build” their visions. Pokono.com functions as a “general contractor” that builds the creations of designers by bringing together material suppliers and 3D fabricators.
DIS RUPT ING. This year-long research studio explored how technologies, such as computer aided design and additive manufacturing (a.k.a. 3D Printing) have the potential to disrupt current thinking surrounding the design, development and fabrication of architectural spaces, forms, components and systems. The course built upon research surrounding the development and invention of new materials for additive manufacturing using standard powder printing equipment that make 3D printing incredibly inexpensive (up to several thousand times less expensive that typical methods), as well as the production of polymer, concrete and ceramic architectural components emerging from these processes. Investment in a process moving from designing digitally to the creation of physical objects that are rich with material potential at several scales were the thrust of the course. The seminar also explored various techniques using computer aided manufacturing to generate a library of material processes informed by digital exploration as well as a set of theories, contexts and issues that propel creativity through the use of these technologies, particularly additive manufacturing at architectural scales.
The discovery of new territories for digital production occured through instruction using an advanced 3D modeler invented for the computer graphics industry, yet the studio forged new workflows that were ideal for precision modeling of mechanical and architectural designs, for freeform organic modeling and for visualization and animation and to visualize and create worlds that did not previously exist.