Prefabrication experiments - 175 - Geometries - 06 - Fabricating Geometry or materializing matter

Stonework and earthwork are hardly suggestive of innovative building systems as industrialization rendered complicated masonry detailing non-relevant within modernised production methods. New manufactured materials such as steel, reinforced concrete or plastics and their components could be assembled with such ease and reproduced in massive quantities. These modern methods challenged longstanding construction techniques putting them on a hiatus, as intensive and precise craftsmanship did not evolve at the same rate as modern construction methods. 

As digital manufacturing devices integrate day-to-day construction, complex objects could be produced with the same ease as Henry Grey’s wide flange steel beam at the beginning of the twentieth century; a revolution which was equally reforming. Further as digital fabrication devices are implemented, architectural components are integrating very complex geometries and will be made-to-order. Emerging Objects, an architectural firm has been exploring 3d printing, an emerging technology for construction, as a way of giving new life to age-old construction methods. They have developed a masonry unit, which requires no mortar. The 3d printed mixture of sand, sawdust, ground-up tires, salt, pulverized bone bound into a type of concrete piece together so precisely into a giant 3d puzzle. The firm was inspired by ashlar stonework in which each stone is precisely cut and dry bedded to form a robust structural system for walls or columns.

As stated by the architects this type of dry stonework (without mortar) displayed a greater resistance to seismic pressure. The organizational principle is that dry stonework can move and resettle after seismic loads. Informed by the study and analysis of ancient Incan stonework, their Quake Column combines precisely defined and numbered elements to facilitate assembly. Various geometric patterns are possible and could be shared with the click of a mouse. As complex geometry no longer requires the steady hand of the stonemason, each individual unit didactically displays its shape relating to a whole individualized pattern. Each chunk’s Geometry is completely self-locking.

This type of file to component production method nuances the traditional debate between on and offsite construction as a large-scale 3d printer produces project specific components reforming the ideals of normalization and standardization normally associated with architectural production. 

animation from the firm's website at 

http://www.emergingobjects.com/project/quake-column/