Influential Pedagogies Using Digital Fabrication Laboratories onArchitectural Education

Abstract

Abstract Innovation in advanced architectural design is imposing a revolution in ways to materialize contemporary buildings of geometrical complexities. In the professional field, such trend is demanding a constant update on the tools required to execute jobs. At the academic level, digital fabrication laboratories are becoming a place to fuse ideas with rationalized principles of construction in addition to helping students visualise the future challenges in the architectural practice. This paper tries to argue the influences on architectural education by the leading function of digital fabrication laboratories, with the prospect of presenting practical assessments of transforming digital information into analogue materiality, along with logical explorations to rationalize fabrication processes. A historical assessment of applied cases in architecture is included, in addition to a description of digital fabrication laboratories, and to an association between instructive approaches in digital fabrication and engineering laboratories. The impact of the introduction of such labs on architectural education is reflected in the conclusion.