Poetic and Artistic Aspects of Digital Fabrication in Architecture

Abstract

New production techniques and digital design tools allow new possibilities in architecture and digital fabrication laboratories provide an environment for these new opportunities. In addition to its potential in terms of science and technology, digital fabrication creates many opportunities for artistic aspects of architecture. Therefore we aimed to make a theoretical discussion and try to provide a new perspective for an evaluation of the phenomenon in the context of artistic and poetic aspects. From this perspective, to clarify the artistic aspects of architecture in the context of digital fabrication technologies and to understand how the subject is covered in the literature clearly, a comprehensive literature review has been made. Initially, the literature review was limited to the themes of digital fabrication and architecture to extract from out-of-context articles and 197 peer review journals written in the last 10 years were examined. Then, a pre-coding schema was prepared from two authors and extended after a detail literature review. The extended coding schema was grouped in terms of their semantic distance and these groups were used to make an assumption about papers. The software MAXQDA, which is commonly used in the social science, assist us to identify the semantic codes related to the research context without any omission. Articles were investigated with the keywords created after precoding. The remaining 51 articles on the field of Architecture were analysed through these codes. Our aim is not to prove if there is sufficient paper that discuss the artistic aspects of digital fabrication. However this methodology helps us to understand the focus of the papers and the tendencies as an approach in this context. In general, the subject of digital fabrication in architecture is studied more about materials, structures, processes, technology and how to use digital fabrication tools instead of why it was examined in the literature. From perspective of artistic dimension, the reviewed papers mainly emphasize ‘characteristic, identity, variety, style, concept, customization, subjective, subjectivity, formal, composition, tectonic, geometry, form’. On the other hand, ‘aesthetic, beauty, expression, art, stereotomy, craft, artifact, are less discusses codes. Words directly related to art and craft are not discussed in the articles and there is less discussion on the aesthetic values of digital fabrication. ‘Sense, experience, perception, intuition’ are also less discussed codes even if these are strong relationship with architectural context. Although not included in the academic literature, the issue of digital fabrication has begun to be discussed in the context of experience, through art installations in 1:1 scale produced by digital fabrication tools. In a nutshell, the issue of art is at least as valuable as the most frequently asked question of how in digital fabrication, and this aspect should be given more place in scientific research.