Making Value: Integrating Manufacturing, Design, and Innovation to Thrive in the Changing Global Economy

Making Value:

Integrating Manufacturing, Design, and Innovation to Thrive in the Changing Global Economy

A free 48-page pdf report from a conference held in Washington, DC on June 11-12th, 2012.

A great report, now to apply these ideas to the change-resistant construction industry.

Frank Gehry on Building Information Modeling

"Ahead of the Curve," Frank Gehry on technology and the future of the building industry in the Financial Times. Great article and an interesting quote, "The next generation of architects is going to draw right on the machine, I am obsolete."

Build the home of your dreams hands free, from your hands to our factory.

We have been building the back end for this project for years and have decided to finally release an alpha version video.   Updates soon.

Bruce Sterling at Wired magazine posted the video here and is driving more traffic.  He referred to it as weird, we think it is exciting.  Wait until you see verion 2, 3, 4, etc.

Founders of Leap Motion: Our Amazing 3D Tracking Will Be Everywhere - Where will it be in Architecture, Engineering and Construction?

Watch this video and ponder what tens of thousands of software developers will do with Leap Motion once they get there hands on the developer kits.




For more information read the full article on the Singularity Hub website here. Take a look at the Leap Motion website, and join the discussion in the Linkedin Group Leap Motion.

McGraw Hill is hosting a conference called FutureTech in San Francisco on July 10th. Included are session on Augmented Reality and other new technologies in architecture, engineering and construction. The list of speakers is impressive, and the focus is the construction industry as is made clear in the marketing blurb below,

"You will also hear where the next wave of exciting innovations will be coming from that will continue to provide powerful benefits to early adopters and change the landscape of the construction industry forever."

And while a few hundred AEC professionals converge in San Francisco to discuss technology-meets-AEC, a few hundred developers will be too busy coding to attend. Despite all the talk about building information modeling and virtual design and construction, the information technology industry and the AEC industry still don't really trust one another and are barely on speaking terms (my opinion from spending more than 10 years in each industry). Software will eat the AEC industry, as it is almost every other industry, and with hardware/software innovation like the Leap, the potential (inevitability) for massive disruption grows daily. The vast majority in the industry will miss the opportunity because they fear change, but it will be forced upon them by consumers themselves who will use new technologies to interact with product and service vendors thereby forcing change from the demand side.

Imagine how much change will occur between the sessions at this year's conference and next year's conference. Tens of thousands of developers will be developing demos and applications using Leap Motion and a few hundred (or even thousand) will focus on computer-aided-design data, and the really forward looking ones will focus on design and computer-aided-manufacturing data, linking design and fabrication. This is where it gets really interesting. And it is the area we are focused on.

This is going to be a wild ride indeed.

Digital Fabrication: From Digital to Material

Although this 3 page PDF is from 2003, it is still a very good introduction to digital fabrication for architecture, engineering and construction. The author is Branko Kolarevic and it contains edited excerpts from his book, Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing.

Leap Motion in Architecture, Engineering and Construction

How can one use this technology in the building industry? We have a few ideas. Watch (interact with) this space.

I started a discussion on the Leap Motion Forum with this title, "Leap in the $4.8 trillion architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry" which now has more than 1,300 views. Not surprising given that in a recent announcement the Leap team stated that over 400 of the 26,000 applicants for their software development kit (SDK) indicated they intended to focus on computer-aided design (CAD) interface enhancements

For more information visit the Leap website, read this review by Wired (their video review embedded below) and join the linked in group "Leap Motion" to join in the discussion.



Using Leap for augmented reality apps in AEC has great potential. While there has already been a lot of discussion about using augmented reality in the industry, leap technology will enable any user to interactive with 3D model data intuitively. And as the interactive functionality supports an increasing amount of real-time, multi-user collaborative design, the possibilities seem almost endless.

McGraw Hill Construction is hosting a Future Tech event in San Francisco on July 10 and the 9 - 10 am session is on Digital Visualization and Augmented Reality. Ideally it will be possible to include a demonstration showing AEC content using leap motion technology at the event.

And on Leap and the Third Industrial Revolution, here is a link to the discussion on the Leap Forums. Although the AEC industry has thus far been minimally impacted by software and technology, most of the really compelling innovation is technology-based, and the greatest potential to realize vast gains in efficiency will be through industrialization, however painful and slow that process is.

Wood 2.0: mass timber and the tall buildings of tomorrow

Great to see the growing interest in massive timber buildings in North America. A good article here from Arstechnica. Great to see Hans-Erik Blomgren from the Arup office in Seattle heavily quoted. Here is a link to a video showing Hans-Erik Blomgren and the architect Joe Mayo making a presentation on digitally fabricated solid wood wall buildings to the Seattle Planning, Land Use, and Sustainability Committee.


And be sure to download the free report on "Tall Wood" from the architect Michael Green.

Ten Timber Software Solutions - from 2007 but still very valid

Finding a thorough review of cad/cam software for timber is difficult at best. I just discovered this review and hope an updated one is available or becomes available soon.

Martin Bechthold on Emerging Assemblies - Robotics, Digital Fabrication and Building Information Modeling

A 2008 video of Martin Bechthold, Professor of Architectural Technology at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

The Case for Tall Wood Buildings - Free 235+ page PDF on prefab wood buildings

An impressive network of collaborators in British Columbia just released this free 240 page pdf report and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in :

• Solid Wood Walls / Cross-laminated timber / X-lam
• Tall residential structures (20+ stories, 30+, and more)
• Digital Fabrication of wood-framed buildings
• CNC fabrication and passive house buildings
• The organizations supporting innovation in the wood industry in Canada
• The future of wood-frame building

The lead author is the architect Michael Green of MGB Architecture in North Vancouver. This research project was supported and included collaboration with FPInnovations, WoodWorksBC, the Canadian Wood Council, Equilibrium Consulting (structural support author, J. Eric Karsh) and others.

Michael Green is one of the leading proponents/advocates for innovative and green wood building in Canada. The videos below are from Michael and demonstrate his passion for innovation using Canada's abundant and renewable natural resource -wood.

In this video Michael speaks about designing with wood and airports.

And here he is speaking passionately about wood as an ideal building material.

Michael Green - "The Challenge of Housing the World and the Role of Wood" Part 1

Part 2

And here he is at TedX Vancouver speaking about "Love, Laughter, Sushi: World Housing and Climate Change".

9-story timber building in the UK - Stadthaus - and why we build with wood

A great video and a great project. Architect Andrew Waugh discusses the building and why wood is, in so many ways, the ideal building material. More information here from StructureMag and at the architect's website.

The Tectonics of Timber Architecture in the Digital Age

This is a great article for those interested in timber fabrication. The authors are some of the leading innovators in wood engineering and fabrication. An example, Hermann Blumer and his firm Creation Holz is recognized as one of the leading wood engineers and has worked on many very innovative projects, including recent projects like the Pompidou Metz (photo below) and work on the new Aspen Art Museum (at bottom), both designed by the architect, Shigeru Ban.

Integrated Design and Delivery Solutions event on April 18-19th in Washington, DC.

I wish I could attend this event to meet with others working to move building information modeling forward and connnect the cam/cnc fabrication community with academic research.

AECbytes had a good article last year on IDDS and referred to it as "Beyond BIM, It's Not the End of the Road."

The event is being organized by Virginia Tech and the National Institute for Standards & Technology (NIST)
and the Board of Directors of the International Council for
Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB)

Biologically Inspired Digital Fabrication at MIT

Dr. Neri Oxman in a in a 5:37 minute labCAST from MIT. Here is the text about the video,

"Mediated Matter research integrates computational form-finding strategies with biologically inspired fabrication in order to enhance the relation between natural and man-made environments. The group seeks to establish new forms of design, and novel processes of material practice at the intersection of computer science, material engineering, design and ecology."

Very inspiring. And great to see cross-domain collaboration.

How to Fabricate - Fabian Scheurer of Design to Production

A great video from a presentation that Fabian Scheurer of Design to Production gave in Copenhagen at a conference organized by the Center for Information Technology in Architecture.

Fabian Scheurer (Design To Production) at the Digital Crafting Symposium 1 from CITA on Vimeo.

More great videos from CITA are available here.

The Economist now including Digital Fabrication in its Topics Index

As Digital Fabrication gains increased media coverage it is great to see the Economist offering increased coverage. See the complete Digital Fabrication index here.

The "Print me a Stradivarius - How a new manufacturing technology will change the world" cover article published in February 2011 was widely quoted (and enjoyed) on the web.

Antoine Picon (Harvard Graduate School of Design) at the Digital Crafting Symposium, Copenhagen 2011

More on Digital Fabrication from Denmark's Center for Information Technology and Architecture

Antoine Picon (Harvard Graduate School of Design) at the Digital Crafting Symposium, Copenhagen 2011 from CITA on Vimeo.

Autodesk and Digital Fabrication + Building Information Modeling

Autodesk and Digital Fabrication. At Autodesk University 2011 in Las Vegas Autodesk CTO, Jeff Kowalski, discussed five waves of technology disruption including digital fabrication in his keynote presentation.



Jeffrey McGrew of Because We Can discussed his experience with digital fabrication. Click here to begin the video with Jeff's presentation (if the link doesn't work simply move ahead to 23m 38s in the keynote video). Jeff also gave a presentation on Five Common Pitfalls and Misconceptions of Digital Fabrication from BIM at the event but it wasn't recorded. Jeff's 20 page presentation from Autodesk University 2009 "From Fabulous to Fabrication: Real-World Digital Fabrication and BIM" is available here.


Mark Hatch, CEO of Techshop, discussed the democratization of digital fabrication and the open-access chain of workshops Techshop is opening across the country. Click here to begin the video with Mark's talk (if the link doesn't work simply move to 29m 37s in the keynote video). Here is a post on Mark's talk from Core77.

And here is Autodesk CEO Carl Bass speaking with Vivek Wadhwa about Innovation and Manufacturing at a Singularity University event in January 2012.



The entire interview is almost an hour long, jump to minute 47:25 for Carl's answer to "How does new manufacturing change architecture?" Direct link to his answer here:

http://youtu.be/Chaj7iK-lt8?t=47m25s

Fabricators know this. And are collaborating with innovative architects interested in building the future - and the future of building.

And here is a link to a video with Autodesk Labs VP Brian Mathews showing a 3D printed motorcycle.

Autodesk does offer a "Using BIM for Fabrication" as a BIM Workshop in the "Extending BIM Beyond Design" series which references many other resources including relevant websites like this linkedin group, "BIM + Digital Fabrication = Smart Building"

Also see some of the Customer Stories at the Autodesk - Building Products, Equipment and Fabrication page and this post from Cadalyst on BIM and Digital Fabrication (1-2-3 Revit Tutorial).

If your interest is the digital fabrication of buildings, I highly recommend this video with Fabian Scheurer of Design To Production on

How to Fabricate

Fabian Scheurer (Design To Production) at the Digital Crafting Symposium 1 from CITA on Vimeo.

I also recommend the video below by David Fano of CASE from the Autodesk Yale University BIM Symposium

Flight Assembled Architecture

From ETH in Switzerland
More information on the ongoing project here:

Robots - The Future of Building?

The Fabricate 2011 Conference, hosted by the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture, showcased the installation 'Stratifications' by Gramazio & Kohler, Architecture and Digital Fabrication, ETH Zurich. 'Stratifications' uses a multiple-axis robot on a caterpillar base to perform real-time construction, combining digital design and methods in fabrication that are not possible with traditional manual building methods. This is the first time that this approach to building has been seen in the UK. Designed and realised by Gramazio & Kohler, Architecture and Digital Fabrication, ETH Zurich (in cooperation with Bachmann Engineering AG, Zofingen) Further information: UCL Bartlett: http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/ Gramazio & Kohler: http://www.dfab.arch.ethz.ch Ruairi Glynn: http://www.aac.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/people/ruairi/ Bob Sheil: http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/research/architecture/profiles/Sheil.htm