Artistic computational design featuring imprecision: A method supporting digital and physical explorations of esthetic features in robotic single-point incremental forming of polymer sheets

Paper in proceeding, 2019

Design strategies that employ digital and material imprecision to achieve esthetic innovation exhibit high potential to transform the current precision-oriented practices of computation and digital fabrication in architecture. However, such strategies are still in their infancy. We present a design method facilitating intentionally-imprecise esthetic explorations within the framework of digital design and robotic single-point incremental forming. Our method gives access to the esthetic fine-tuning of molds from which architectural objects are cast. Semi-precise computational operations of extending, limiting, deepening and shallowing the geometrical deformations of the mold through robot toolpath fine-tuning are enabled by a digital toolkit featuring parametric modeling, surface curvature analyses, photogrammetry, digital photography and bitmap image retouching and painting. Our method demonstrates the shift of focus from geometric accuracy and control of material behaviors towards intentionally-imprecise digital explorations that yield novel esthetic features of architectural designs. By demonstrating the results of applying our method in the context of an exploration-driven design process, we argue that imprecision can be equally valid to accuracy, opening a vast, excitingly unknown territory for material-mediated esthetic explorations within digital fabrication. Such explorations can interestingly alter the esthetic canons and computational design methods of digital architecture in the nearest future.