The Digital Corbeled Wall. A Pedagogical Approach to Digital Infrastructure and Traditional Craft.

This paper investigates a pedagogical approach to the digital by revealing the contemporary, globalized infrastructure of design through engagement with local traditional craft in India. The approach is explained through a narrative of a three-week workshop in India that involved architects, digital fabricators, digital coders and a mix of Indian and American students. This diverse team synchronized their skills with a local mason to construct a geometrically complex mud brick wall. The process of the workshop exposed the principles of the digital vernacular, identified as a way of designing and building that integrates the contrasting technologies and techniques of designing and making seen around the world – from the digits of the hand to the digital of the computer. The workshop was theoretically positioned in the pre-modern notion of handicraft and a post-digital notion of design, between a pedagogical approach of learning-by-doing and a grassroots approach to design practice. By exploring the intersections between two seemingly oppositional concepts—traditional masonry and computational design—this paper is able to expose opportunities for the future integration of handwork, craft, and technology. The workshop project highlights how abstract values like material knowledge and craft that informed the algorithm that generated a parametric model of the wall. This parametric model was not a static form, but instead one that was constantly evolving and re-making itself in response to the physical wall, the hand of the mason, and the variations of on-the-ground human error. It was the result of a synchronized process of laying bricks in a curve, measuring levels and coordinates, that became data for the algorithm, milling the bricks as per the parametric model, and in totality, achieving the desired corbelled effect. The adaptive choreography between the mason, the students, and architects revealed an alternative practice model where knowledge doesn’t flow in a singular linear format of digital-to-physical, but a back and forth between the two, where each informs the other, doing what each does best, mathematically and humanly. Taking into consideration perspectives of the various participants, the paper will examine several layers of learning. For example, the benefit of using digital technology with something as traditional as mud fired bricks; a material that is readily available in the context, suited to the climate, and indigenous to the mason. Additionally, the benefit of combining computational tools of architecture in a culture and economy that is primarily labor driven is acknowledged in the workshop by preventing local materials and craft processes from being made obsolete by a one-size-fits-all model that is implanted directly from foreign culture. The paper will conclude with an explanation of pedagogical strategies of digital infrastructures and an argument for re-looking at digital fabrication not just as a futuristic practice, but for its pragmatic utility here-and-now. This was done by encouraging time-tested best practices, even if of a different technological era, but with pertinence in the current time and place. Most crucially, it makes a suggestion towards the future of architecture and the future of education, and why it is of value to involve designers and architects in the practice of making.

This paper investigates a pedagogical approach to the digital by revealing the contemporary, globalized infrastructure of design through engagement with local traditional craft in India through a workshop style course. The process of the workshop exposed the principles of digital vernacular, identified as a way of designing and building that integrates the contrasting technologies and techniques of designing and making seen around the world. By exploring the intersections between seemingly opposing concepts-traditional masonry and computational design-this paper exposes opportunities for the future integration of handwork, craft, and technology.The workshop approach highlights how abstract values like material knowledge and craft skill can inform a design algorithm to generate a parametric model of a wall. [Figure 01]. Taking into consideration perspectives of the various participants, the paper will examine several layers of learning. It will conclude with an explanation of pedagogical strategies for learning about digital infrastructures and an argument for re-examining digital fabrication not just as a futuristic practice, but for its pragmatic utility here-and-now. Most crucially, the discussion makes a suggestion towards the future of design and the future of education, and why it is of value to involve designers and architects in the practice of making.