• Scheurer, Fabian. “Materialising Complexity.” The New Structuralism: Design, Engineering and Architectural Technologies 80.4 (2010): 86-93. AD Reader. Web. 13 Sept. 2013. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad.1111/abstract>.
  • Scheurer, co-founder of designtoproduction, provides a comprehensive account of how this shift to curvilinear and complex forms has impacted on design and production methods, and the strengths and pitfalls of parametric design and CNC fabrication.

designtoproduction consults on the digital production of complex architectural designs.(86)

“Finding an elegant, common definition for all the different details of a curved facade is even more difficult than solving the problem for just one, nicely orthogonal situation.”
“That finally means you have to know about geometry. All the mathematics, so comfortably hidden behind the CAD software’s buttons, suddenly has to be dealt with in the form of normal vectors, curvature measures and coordinate transformations.”(89-91)
Can be an argument for “why me?” I am knowledgeable about architectural form and geometry as it is represented in the computer. I am not as skilled in mathematics, but I do understand what goes on behind the scenes to an extend from my knowledge of grasshopper scripting and computer programming.

“The algorithm is much easier to handle than the set of drawings – especially when it comes to changes”(91)
An argument for algorithms that can take in inputs, such as the component, and parametrically figure out the tooling and manufacturing process for that particular component. This requires abstraction of the problem to one which a computer program can solve.

“The idea of just sending a 3-D model to the fabricator and receiving a few containers full of mass-customised components some days later is downright utopian. The mass-customisation system that translates the design input into production data has to be developed first.”(93)
Mass Customisation as a common practice is not yet realized. I believe new tools are required that simplify the generation of a customized part and reduce the time from file-to-factory. This quote speaks to the idea of digital craft, where a new project requires new methods of construction and does not rely on age-old reliable manufacturing methods. New processes need to be developed, and each new process leads to undetermined risks, which is what craft is all about.

Definitions:

Descriptive Complexity: a printout of the program code together with a table of all parameter sets needs less paper than all the workshop drawings.(91)
Kolmogorov-Complexity: the shortest description of the object in a given language.(93)
Mass Customisation: the production of individual components at almost the price of mass production through the use of digitally controlled (CNC) fabrication tools.(91)