research
NSO script library
(coming soon)
Nonlinear Fabrication
Funded by Bentley Systems
What are the next steps in Digital Fabrication? Though computer-aided production is now maturing, what will the production scenarios look like 20 years down the road? As computational platforms become pervasive, how can digital fabrication enable convergence between disciplines? These are some of the questions driving the NSO research project, Nonlinear Fabrication, an investigation into the future of digital fabrication and its possible impact on the building industry.
Two independent lines of research have been initiated. The first studies the problem of digital fabrication specifically in architectural design. What are the current logics of component based fabrication? How might these logics evolve and transform relative to emerging technologies of 3-D printing at one to one scale? What would computational platforms need to support? The second line of research engages the problem of digital biosynthesis in medicine and pathology. Through an exciting partnership with the IME at UPenn (Institute for Medicine and Engineering), the problems of computer-aided analysis and therapeutic intervention are to be studied. This is to include an innovative incorporation of Generative Components into the modeling of biosynthetic processes.
These two lines of investigation hold the promise of a pioneering cross-pollination of disciplinary expertise where the tectonic logics of architecture opens insights into the biosynthetic processes of life systems, and the evolutionary environmental conditions of biosynthetic phenomena extends the dynamic possibilities of the normally static life cycle of building systems. Further, the convergence between these two lines of research, these two extensive fields of expertise, promises to broaden our understanding of future scenarios of computer-aided production in our world, uncovering new workflows and future markets.
This research project represents a unique opportunity to leverage the world class talent in Architecture and Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. It aims to enrich the educational and research cultures at the University, and takes steps toward deciphering the disciplinary convergences of the 21st century.
