University of Virginia
School of Architecture
Spring 2007

Monday/Wednesday
9:00-10:15 a.m.
Campbell Hall Room 108

Eric Field
[emfield@virginia.edu]
Room 134, 924-4033

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Arch549 CNC Fabrication is a seminar about computation and the physical making of architecture. The course centers on student research into computer-controlled modeling and fabrication techniques through extensive hands-on use of the CNC lab and advanced CAD technologies. The course focuses heavily on the making of objects, parts, and systems at real-world, real-material scales and on the invention of strategies that link geometric form and computation with fabrication and material processing. Lectures and lab sessions provide a foundation for understanding the technology and its impact on architecture and industrial design, as well as the practical knowledge for using the machines. Fabrication exercises allow students to test these theories and explore computation as it couples with machine fabrication.

Students will learn and use the school’s laser cutters, 3D printer / rapid prototyping technology, 3D milling machine, 3D router, and 3D digitizer, along with the software that controls each of them. We will also visit several local fabrication shops through field trips to explore – and perhaps use – CNC technologies not available within the school. Each student will ultimately produce a focused project of research that explores and develops a strategy of making using Computer Numerical Control (CNC) and its link to design thinking.

Beyond a greater understanding of craft and hands-on access to the tools, the pedagogic focus of the course is on harnessing processes of making and the description of process, form, and system as problem solving devices for designers. Students will use their research over the semester as a means to describe and build something and to propose ways of thinking about that thing – what it is, how it relates to formal ideas, and how its description and process of fabrication impact the form and use that it takes on.

This year the course will continue to expand on investigations into complex surface topologies as they apply to architecture and landscape architectural forms, and on new and developing technologies in parametric modeling for fabrication.

Requirements
Students are expected to participate and contribute regularly in class discussion - largely from their own research and experimentation. Class participation, readings, and general research count toward 10% of the grade. Five fabrication projects provide the bulk of students’ work in the class. The first four exercises cover 10% each. The final research project completes the remaining 50%.

Readings
Architectural and other industry periodicals provide the majority of readings.
Further reference books, manuals, and articles are available in the CNC lab.