From mechanical to digital paradigm. Empirical Methodology

Abstract

The new digital tools have become into essential instruments for architecture: they have revolutionized various fields, from graphic representation to conception and including to the development of new ways of transferring knowledge. The current computer tools allow us a more accurate representation of reality and digital manufacturing tools make possible to control the design and production simultaneously. The completion process has a great influence on the result. Architecture must not avoid the existing reciprocity between the formal intentions and the possibilities of manufacture. The paradigm of the standardization, which it is present during the most of the XXth century, gives way to the digital paradigm present nowadays in the schools of architecture and the Fablab or Digital Laboratories. From an experimental perspective diverse international workshops have been organized, as an strategy to test the validity of the new digital paradigm. For one week the students are working about deployable structures and they design architectural artefacts using a series of methodologies introduced at the beginning of the seminar. The new digital paradigm allows to produce exclusive prototypes in contrast to the mechanical paradigm that realized products in series. For this reason it becomes necessary to define some useful parameters to relate and compare different characteristics between prototypes, and all these parameters associated with the efficiency of the process.