By augmenting the builder with precision, and by freeing design ideas from the constraints of mass production, digital fabrication has the potential to rehabilitate the strained relationship between humans and machines. The digital transformation of construction re-emphasizes basic design principles by freeing decision-making from the otherwise in-built constraints of manual fabrication.
This briefing note takes advantage of Arup’s global presence and multiple design practices to highlight diverse techniques, understood implications and successes in digital fabrication across the world. It focuses on today’s computer control of fabrication, provides an alternative plausible future to industrialized construction, and hints at the very promising future of mass customization.
