The influence of digital tools on architecture

idz arhitectură is an emergent architecture and design studio, who's research and design focuses on the involvement of computation in the creative process and on the use of advanced digital fabrication tools in the making of architectural artifacts. The development of research in the field of computation and digital fabrication is fueled by a united passion of the two studio members, Ionuț Anton and Dana Tănase, and is also doubled by doctoral research. Our research transcends a new expression of architecture and its dependence on digital tools, and goes further into substance, developing new ways in which we think and make architecture and design using digital tools.

From a designer point of view, technology was inflexible; one had to work with what one was provided with. Until recently the architects were waiting for other disciplines to develop tools and select from a catalog of possibilities. By doing so, they are not active individuals and their professional experience and knowledge will not influence the future development of the architecture practice. This led the architect to lose touch with the production process and to assume a more abstract status. Through the digital technology the architect is provided with an opportunity in designing and adapting highly customizable tools, used in both digital design and fabrication. The digital designer must assume the fact that he has to lose the power of control in some aspects of the design process, to gain a higher involvement into the project. Digital technology provides a common ground where the designer creativity is put together with digital conceptual tools and digital fabrication tools, in a very flexible feedback relationship. Ironically, by proposing a negotiation between design, fabrication and computation, through digital technology, the autocratic aspect on technology is dissolved. Thus, by using digital technology in the architecture practice from concept to the fabrication, one has the opportunity to obtain a unique specific response, more informed, locally adapted architectural object. This uniqueness of the final architecture product was achieved, using, in a different way, a range of prefabricated standard components and as few as possible custom elements. This approach indicates the lack of creativity and flexibility brought by the materialization processes into the project design. [...]