Toni Kotnik and Fabio Gramazio lecture is about rule-based design paradigms, whereby they focus on both design methodologies as well as their meaning for the broader context of digital design culture. The rules that inform design processes can have an aesthetic, constructive or structural nature and are always tightly related to the question of its “making”, meaning on the one side the question of constructability and on the other side the way architecture is finally fabricated and materialized. Materiality is increasingly being enriched with digital characteristics, which substantially affect architecture’s physis, it’s form and matter. Both principles are intricately interwoven. In the physical world one cannot occur without the other: no material is without form and no form exists without materialisation. With the utilization of the computer as design tool, this interdependency of form and material has been translated into an abstract set of interacting causalities. The synthesis of two seemingly distinct worlds – the digital and the physical – generates new, self-evident realities. Data and material, programming and construction are interwoven. This synthesis is enabled by the techniques of digital simulation and digital fabrication, which allows the architect to control the material behaviour and the manufacturing process through design data. Material is thus enriched by information. This new situation transforms the possibilities and thus the professional scope of the architect.
Prof. Fabio Gramazio
Dipl. Architect ETH SIA BSA
Fabio Gramazio is an architect with multi-disciplinary interests ranging from computational design and robotic fabrication to material innovation. In 2000, he founded the architecture practice Gramazio & Kohler in conjunction with his partner Matthias Kohler, where numerous award-wining designs have been realized, integrating novel architectural designs into a contemporary building culture. Trained at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich, his integral approach to practice and research focuses on the interplay of digital design and material processes through advanced construction methodologies. Since 2005, Gramazio & Kohler hold the Chair for Architecture and Digital Fabrication at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich. Founding the world’s first architectural robotic laboratory, the pioneering investigations of Fabio Gramazio concentrate on non-standardized architectural design and additive fabrication processes through the customized use of industrial robots. A significant amount of research has been accomplished addressing scales ranging from 1:1 prototypical installations to the design of robotically fabricated high-rise buildings. Currently Fabio Gramazio’s research is focusing on adaptive design strategies for constructive material systems and in-situ robotic fabrication.
