Digital Media and Material Practice

The course will investigate the opportunities presented by digital design and fabrication techniques to engage more directly with design as a material practice. The course is aimed at fostering a conceptual as well as technical approach to the leveraging of digital design and fabrication techniques within the design and construction processes. We will dedicate the semester to develop a project that takes advantage of a number of emerging and established digital techniques and processes in order to develop new material and tectonic systems that are applicable in and reshape/reorganize specific landscape conditions.

This focused project will be the means through which a wide range of skills and approaches towards the utilization of digital design and fabrication techniques may be introduced and developed through workshops and lectures, in order to inform and enrich the process from design conception through to the fabrication process. The course will cover and develop skills, techniques and concepts in digital design media (geometric modeling, associative/parametric design, computational geometry, scripting) as well as digital fabrication (3d printing, CNC milling, robotic fabrication / assembly). The course will also involve regular workshops, crits and discussions with material scientists from Harvard\’s Wyss Institute, biologists and specialists within the design professions in the fields of computation and fabrication.

The course will meet once a week and will be conducted in the computer lab and make use of the fabrication laboratory. It is encouraged that applicants to the course have some basic to intermediate level skills in digital tools, however this is not a requirement.