Orchestration Fall 2008 GSAPP Workshop - updated
Below is the brief of a new class a few colleagues and I are working on at Columbia’s GSAPP this Fall.
The recent obsession with digital fabrication in architecture schools has focused on the return of the ‘master builder’ through direct production offered by computer numerical control. While this form of production has resulted in a resurgence of full scale prototyping, it emphasizes an isolated study of tools and techniques over communication and collaboration. Without argument the most significant change facilitated by information technology has been the means by which architects communicate with their peers involved in building production. This workshop seeks to realign digital fabrication from prototyping to production and simulate a form of digital exchange grounded in actual practice. In this case, digital fabrication shifts from design based on a particular tool and an individual knowledge of technique to design based on rules of production with a network of expertise contributing to the final outcome. Here designers need to embed the downstream logic of production (including logistics, manufacturing, assembling, installation, etc…) into the upstream tools of design, while simultaneously streamlining the communication pathways with the people and machines who carry out this production.
The Class is being sponsored by: 
