CNC Milling as Foundation for Life

Architectural ornament has seen a resurgence with the application of digital design and fabrication technologies. At the same time, ornament has shifted from purely symbolic function to high performance facades that conserve energy, or, in some cases, generate their own. Coupled with this high-performance metric is a renewed interest in expressive textures and articulated facades made largely possible by digital manufacturing.1,2 The tools that support these innovative designs have also found success in replicating and restoring historic structures, thus broadening their impact and relevance to the profession. Moreover, from an ecological perspective, digitally-derived ornamentation may have the potential to address the emerging crises of species extinction and habitat loss, particularly near urban areas where the cumulative surface area of buildings and hardened landscapes exceeds that of natural settings by several orders of magnitude. These architectural, urban and landscape surfaces represent an opportunity to facilitate life itself within the built environment, and in many ways, could be the designer’s greatest opportunity to include biodiversity as criteria for design of sustainable and resilient built environments.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.110.30

Volume Editors
Robert Gonzalez, Milton Curry & Monica Ponce de Leon

ISBN
978-1-944214-40-1