BUILDING + / - a practice working at the boundary of architecture and construction

The domains of design conception and building procurement, typically understood as distinct, can be conflated through practices using computational design and digital fabrication tools. The body of practice research examined in this dissertation provides a window into how such conflation impacts the architecture and construction industries in the instance of a fabrication-enabled architecture practice. This practice challenges these domains by proposing an alternate hybrid which sheds certain notions of architecture while augmenting the acts of making.

This study has been undertaken through the lens of a design and fabrication practice, Studio Workshop, as well as prior and concurrent pursuits as a university educator and researcher working in a collaborative practice modality. Individual projects of the practice are investigated to reveal the dynamic interplay of designing and making in various workflows, yielding results and qualities which are contingent upon the tools used, the collaborators engaged, and other parameters. By examining those processes, a set of broader and more fundamental motivations and intentions become evident.

This is a practice that trades in affect over meaning, challenges cultural distinctions that (can often) set disciplines apart, augments the conventions of design and of building procurement with digital tools, tracks the transmission of tacit knowledge across various processes, and articulates a transformational mentality that can register at the scale of the building industry.