Shifting Wall

The Shifting Wall is an investigation of the dialogue and tension between design and digital fabrication through a bottom-up approach to a part-to-whole system. Addressing issues of mass-customization, the study seeks to streamline the relationship between the algorithmic processes used to generate the wall and the CNC milling processes used to fabricate the building units. Variation is employed to produce porosity within the wall as a means of achieving visibility and natural lighting while protecting the interior from preciptal and other environmental systems.

The advent of digital manufacturing has introduced an emerging possibility, and a twist in the legal distinction between "design intent" and "means of construction" by the elimination of the traditional shop drawing process. The designer, not the builder, may now be responsible for the creation of digital drawings that directly guide the manufacture of components for the assembly of buildings. While these processes have been part of the reality of industrial design for quite some time, their use in the production of buildings is relatively new and underutilized. However atypical, the use of digitally guided manufacturing is already giving us a sense of how buildings may change in the future.

This project is a collaboration with Michael Harris.