Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Ammar Kalo
While digital fabrication techniques have the potential to automate processes and increase material efficiency, there are very few examples that produce complex highly-textured concrete surfaces without requiring countless hours of explicit modeling and CNC milling.The pedagogical decision to not use any computer controlled milling machines was to distance the students working on this Design-Build project from relying on the direct information transfer from CAD models to CAM software, and invest more time into exploring material potentials. Using this experimental approach, students spent the first half of the semester developing over 15 methods, before narrowing them down to three. In each cases explored, digital models are used to generate instructions for manual tasks. In addition, they all are meant to produce molds for spraying glass reinforced concrete (GRC), which results in panels that are lighter, thinner, and stronger that traditional concrete panels. Every variable in the process was carefully cataloged and documented to ensure reproducibility.As the prototypes got more developed and refined, students gained an intuitive knowledge of material behavior and tweaked their process variables with confidence to produce predicable results.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AMP.105.18
Volume Editors
Luis Francisco Rico-Gutierrez & Martha Thorne
ISBN
978-1-944214-07-4
