Material Systems, Computation & Making

This course follows the vision of Integrative Design | Extremes in addressing climatic, political, and economic extremes, with a particular focus on material care. Students will develop practical skills in computational design and digital fabrication through the investigation of stone as a natural material system. They will learn to identify material limitations and opportunities, translate them into computational strategies, and test these through physical prototyping and fabrication.

Through individual and collaborative experimentation, students will develop the ability to connect material behaviour, computational logic, and fabrication processes, and to critically evaluate their impact on architectural performance. Students will further develop their digital skills through the practical application of Rhino, Grasshopper 3D, 3D scanning, and 3D printing.

Contents

This seminar investigates how computational design and digital fabrication can extend the capabilities of natural stone beyond conventional construction methods. Aspects of sustainability will be highlighted in the design oriented course.

Stone is approached as a familiar but highly constrained material: strong, heavy, irregular, durable and difficult to manipulate. Students will investigate how these properties can become inputs for computational design rather than limitations to be overcome.

The central question is:

Can ‘digital stone’ perform beyond conventional stone?

“Performance” is intentionally open and may relate to structure, material efficiency, fabrication, assembly, geometry, environmental performance, or other qualities discovered through experimentation.

Students will work through individual and small-group investigations before developing one collective final object or installation. There will be the option of fabricating the final project using a Desamanera stone 3D-printing system in collaboration with BAM Berlin.

Key Topics:

• Stone as a material system: properties, limitations and opportunities
• Physical prototyping and iterative testing
• Collaborative design and collective decision-making
• Computational design: parameters, rules, geometry and material-driven workflows
• Digital fabrication : processes, constraints and fabrication-aware design

Methods

The course combines short lectures, computational design and digital fabrication workshops, physical experimentation, prototyping and group critiques.

Students initially work individually and in small teams to explore different approaches to computationally enhanced stone. The investigations remain open and iterative, allowing ideas to develop, merge or change direction through physical testing.

Following a midterm comparison of the different investigations, the class develops a collective project. The final phase focuses on computational development, prototyping, fabrication and assembly.

The course emphasises learning through making, with physical prototypes used to test and challenge digital assumptions.

Schedule

Date	Format	Hours
9 Oct	Long session // Intro + Scan & Model Workshop	13:00-17:00
23 Oct	2h First exercise Results	15:00-17:00
30 Oct	Long session // CompDesign(Grasshopper) workshop	13:00-17:00
6 Nov	Crit	15:00-17:00
13 Nov	Long session // Digital Fabrication workshop	13:00-17:00
20 Nov	Crit	15:00-17:00
4 Dec	Long collective design session	13:00-17:00
11 Dec	Crit	15:00-17:00
15 Jan	Crit	15:00-17:00
22 Jan	Finals	tba