Augmented Craftsmanship

Abstract

Over the past decade, we have witnessed rapid advancements on both practical and theoretical levels in regard to automated construction as a consequence of increasing sophistication of digital fabrication technologies such as robotics, 3D printing, etc. However, digital fabrication technology is often very limited when it comes to dealing with delicate and complex crafting processes. Although digital fabrication processes have become widely accessible and utilized across industries in recent times, there are still a number of fabrication techniques—which heavily rely on human labour—due to the complex nature of procedures and delicacy of materials. With this in mind, we need to ask ourselves if full automation is truly an ultimate goal, or if we need to (re)consider the role of humans in the architectural construction chain, as automation becomes more prevalent. We propose rethinking the role which human, machine, and computer have in construction— occupying the territory between purely automated, exclusively robotically-driven fabrication and highly crafted processes requiring human labour. This is to propose an alternative to reducing construction to fully automated assembly of simplified/discretized building parts, by appreciating physical properties of materials and nature of crafting processes. The research proposes a design-to-construction workflow pursued and enabled by augmented humans using AR devices. As a result, proposed workflows are tested on three prototypical inhabitable structure, aiming to be applicable to other projects in the near future, and to bridge the gap between purely automated construction processes on one hand, and craft-based, material-driven but labour-intensive processes on the other.