studio chahar
Research Project:
Screen Maker: a low-tech digital mason
Completed in 2015
Low-tech building methods have been gradually developed over thousands of years according to the actual needs of a community and the demands of location-specific requirements. High-tech digital design has advanced the level of precision and control over material applications and has increased the possibilities for studying design options. But where might the two meet? How can innovation in construction carry forward the lessons learned from vernacular and low-tech building solutions? This work explores the relationship between digital design and low-tech application by local labor looking for opportunities to advance the exchange between both the design process and the practice. The goal is to study and advance the linkage between the precision and design innovation of computational technology with traditional building systems in a context-aware manner.
The study process starts by developing an algorithmic digital 3d modeling tool that allows the users to design brick masonry wall systems in a digital world and to create construction guides for building the wall in the physical world, allowing for back and forth communication between the designer, the community and the mason during the design and construction process. This process lets the team simultaneously study different design factors including form, pattern, and solar exposure and communicate the result with the mason using simple paper guides called "DNA guide". Instead of presenting an image of a complex form and imposing a digitally fabricated foreign form in a traditional setting, the community are presented with a tool that allows them to engage with the designer and the mason to study the form, the texture and the materiality of a future design and advocate for their needs and desires. Rather than solely relying on high-tech tools, this approach links digital design with traditional making techniques and builds upon existing low-tech methods for greater global implementation at smaller costs.
This work explores an alternative approach to the practice of digitally designed artifacts by looking at brick screens as a manifestation for projects of bigger scale. To develop the digital design algorithm and the practice toolkit a full-scale brick screen prototype was first designed and built, then the toolkit was applied in designing and building Compressed Earth Block (CEB) screen walls, constructed in Western Africa by local labor as part the facade of a multifamily housing project. A third prototype is also designed to test the application of the toolkit at a larger scale.