Doctoral Student: Laurence Crouzet
The machine and information age led the transition from industrial to digital design and fabrication in architecture. This fundamental change impacted how we preserve the construction process and its resulting objects. Knowledge about building materials, construction techniques, and assembly is now preserved digitally or dismissed. The loss, corruption, or absence of data challenges and complicates the maintenance, repair, and adaptation of buildings.
The research focuses on repairing digitally fabricated architecture and ensuring the long-term preservation of related digital-born data and construction processes. Traditional building research methods alone cannot adequately capture information for authentic maintenance and upgrade. It is essential to prioritize approaches that leverage novel technologies, such as augmented reality, motion capture and tracking, and human-machine collaboration. Overlaying digital twins and human motion to synchronize with the physical twin allows for a seamless and precise repair process. This favors the transmission of intangible cultural heritage while preserving craftsmanship methods of discretely assembled buildings.
By shifting the attention from the built work to the process, the research tackles the impending problems of the preservation of historically significant and digitally fabricated buildings. It promotes social sustainability with the effective integration of tacit and cognitive knowledge from fabrication processes. It values repair over replacement or recycling, which lowers environmental and economic hardships, maintains material and assembly heritage, and upkeeps technical craftsmanship.
This research is part of the Digital Construction Archive project and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The case studies are part of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Digital Fabrication (DFAB).
