Digital Fabrication: in search of a model for the post-Fordist society

Introduction

Digital fabrication techniques, namely 3D printing are in the air. Some claim is just a fashion, others the next big thing, the most optimistic, claim digital fabrication is the 3rd industrial revolution which will shape a new mode of production for the post-Fordist society that is on the way.

In an introduction to his book on post-Fordism, Ash Amin argues that our society is in transition since the 1970s, from the peak of the postwar industrial society to a different model, engaging in the discourse within social sciences that “the era of mass production is under challenge”. The definition of what post-Fordist society is or is to be features many different recent social sciences paradigms or “new ages” such as the information age and globalisation. An approach more relevant for the purpose of this essay is Flexible Specialisation, consisting in a new mode of production based on versatility of technology and labour to satisfy volatility of demand. In regards of this paper, society is assumed to be in transition and the consequences for architecture fabrication will be discussed in following pages.

MARCHAND, Yves & MAFFRE, Romain, 2010, Packard Motors Plant in The Ruins of Detroit. [online]

After critiquing the widespread claims that 3D printing is the technology that will solve all our fabrication problems in the near future, the essay will focus on ground braking work by Buckminster Fuller. His work engages with the values of the Fordist context he lived in and set a standard for current architects as in how to design in accordance to the shifting society we live in. In the light of Fuller’s work and the social theory on Flexible Specialisation, the essay will finish evaluating the use of digital fabrication techniques by Catalan architect Enric Ruiz Geli in two recently completed buildings.

Flexible Specialisation in ‘post-Fordism’

As part of the post-Fordism debate, there are different approaches to what post-Fordist society is or is meant to be. As mentioned in the introduction, the most relevant for the purpose of this essay is Flexible Specialisation, which is argued for intensely in the work by American professors of economics and social science respectively Michael Piore and Charles Sabel. In their 1984 book The Second Jndustrial Divide they argue that industrial production is based in two opposed paradigms: mass production of standardised goods by unskilled workers and Flexible Specialisation, that refers to crafts and consists on the production of customised non standard goods by skilled workers.

According to them, both models coexist in time, however, they identify periods in history in which one of the paradigms prevails over the other. The process of one paradigm taking over the other is what they call an Industrial Divide. Piore and Sabel situate the first Industrial Divide at the beginning of the 20th century, with the emergence of mass production in the West, namely in the United States, thanks to development in techniques such as the assembly line and Keynesian macroeconomic policies.

The Second Industrial Divide starts with the economic stagnation in the 1970s and the collapse of Keynesian macroeconomics. Demand starts to be more volatile in quantitative and qualitative terms and many industries see how that volatility does not grant returns for the high investment in machinery necessary to release a mass produced good. Piore and Sabel declare the death of the Fordist mode of production in the United States and propose a model of Flexible Specialisation, making reference to models of the past in which regions and not large companies were the “matrix” of industrial production.

Arguing for Flexible Specialisation, Piore and Sabel refer to issues of relations of production, defending that under a Flexible Specialisation model, employers and employees establish a relation based on the skills of the worker that gives dignity back to labour, in clear connection with theMarxist concept of the alienation of industrial proletariat. Piore and Sabel’s ideas seems to have permeated to those involved in digital fabrication. When askedabout the advantages of digital fabrication of objects, Vicente Guallart, head of Iaac (Barcelona) and involved in the Institute’s FabLab in collaboration with MIT, argued that it was about value. When someone purchases a mass produced chair, he argues the manufacturer keeps all the value, whilst if someone designs themselves a chair and fabricate it, the greater investment of money is justified by a value that they can keep, for instance, in form of skills acquired or social relations established going through the process.

Sabel and Piore’s work has been critiqued for proposing a rigid duality between mass production and Flexible Specialisation, although Mario Carpo would introduce digital fabrication in the mix as a contemporary alternative to crafts. In fact contesting critiques of naivety to their argument in favour of a large-scale return to a crafts industry paradigm, Amin stated, at a time when those techniques were in a less promising state of development, that Flexible Specialisation does not imply crafts as we traditionally conceive them but also CNC and other digital fabrication techniques that allow for a high level of adaptability of the same machine for the manufacturing of a variety of designs. In the current scenario in which attention is paid to digital fabrication from the media but also from academia, Sabel and Piore’s ideas become more relevant.

As an example, WIRED devoted its March 2010 cover to the new Industrial Revolution that was emerging out of distributed networks of designers and manufacturers. Their success is based in the development of the internet, which allows to crowd-source design and coordinate fabrication processes that take place in different parts of the world, but also in the flexibility of manufacturers to satisfy demand for non standard components at a medium-small scale. That flexibility is achieved by digital fabrication. Within architecture, digital fabrication techniques are the answer to post-modern architects that wanted variation in their buildings and were unable to produce it by other means but expensive traditional crafts. They also represent a challenge for a discipline that, besides the ground breaking work of pioneers like Richard Buckminster Fuller, did not engage at all in the modes of production of the Fordist society we are leaving behind.

3D Printing & the Single Pore House

When speaking about digital fabrication everything seems to point out at 3D printing. Only in the first few weeks of 2013 before the completion of this essay, BBC News website had twenty entries, pieces of news, about people who want to fabricate things, from human organs to lunar bases, by 3D printing. That leads to prophetic statements about 3D printing being the revolution to come.

Within the field of architecture many are the professionals who claim that are about to be able to 3D print entire buildings. However, as an only fabrication technique, 3D printing extremely narrows the range of design possibilities. The tectonics of 3D printed architecture are limited by the only possibility of accumulative material deposition. Even when we talk about multi material printing, the process is still only accumulative, missing one of the par excellence issues in architecture: the joint.

BERGDOLL, Barry & CHRISTENSEN, Peter, 2008, Home delivery: fabricating the modern dwelling. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. p. 45

A critique of 3D printing of whole building tracks back to the early years of the 20th century, when Thomas A. Edison developed the Single Pour House. The construction of the whole house consisted in building a complex negative scaffolding of the whole house and then fill it with concrete in an only pour. Casting such a big piece in one pour implied very complex logistics, specially taking into account that the houses were built in 1917. Besides, once finished and inhabited, the houses started to suffer several structural malfunctions, due to having any joint altogether to absorb expansion and retraction of the material or the difficulty of keeping a homogeneous mixture of concrete during the long pour, among others.

The single pour house was valuable from the point of view of developing technique for on-site concrete building. However it is an example of the great limitation of mono systems of one material, one technique, no joints and no elements. In regards of this essay, the case study of the Single Pour House leads to focus the digital fabrication debate on issues of non standard elements, assembly and mass customisation, starting with a review of the work of Buckminster Fuller.

Richard Buckminster Fuller: the Fordist Architect

In the light of the previous section of flexible specialisation, the work of Richard Buckminster’s Fuller can be framed right between the two Industrial Divides defined by Sabel and Piore. His architecture, namely the Dymaxion Houses, shows an absolute engagement with the values and mode of production of Fordism at the peak of its development. Nevertheless, the relevance of his work transcends the context of the Fordist society as it should be taken as a guide for designers aiming to engage with the values of the new post-Fordist society that is to come.

The Dymaxion House was designed to be fully fabricated off-site and only assembly would be carried on on-site. This meant a radical approach to fabrication that distinguished Fuller among any other designer working on prefabrication at that time. Fuller made a great distinction between assembly and sub-assembly. According to him the building industry of mid 20th century America had limited itself to the fabrication of panels and parts for buildings thatwere used on-site in a process that was much more complex that simple assembly. Fuller argued for a building system which allowed for fabrication of parts in a factory that were finished to a point that required nothing more than assembly on-site. The most radical example of this is probably the Dymaxion Bathroom (1936-38) which was delivered with full functionality ready to install inside a house. Such bathrooms exist nowadays and are generalised in certain building types but it took decades to the industry to assimilate Fuller’s design.

The following example illustrates the difference Fuller makes between assembly and sub-assembly and why his approach to prefabrication was so radical. A clay brick is an industrial product that is fabricated off-site and then used on-site to make a building. It is a case of sub-assembly as it requires of other materials and techniques for its use as part of the building. Its engagement with the values of Fordism is limited. On the other hand, the LEGO system is an example of assembly as understood by Fuller because the finished element that comes out of the factory needs neither other material neither any technique to be assembled. Its engagement with the values of Fordism is complete. The components of the Wichita house were finished in the factory so that when taken on-site needed no other material or technique to assemble them in the form of a house.

Fuller’s argument for the mass production of houses was a very clear analogy with car industry. In order to provide quality dwellings for a large and growing population at an affordable price, there was no other way than mass produce them in a similar fashion as cars. However, the actual designs of the Dymaxion Houses are closer to the shipyard and aircraft industry. In fact, when he built the Wichita prototype, he developed it within the aircraft industry.

Besides mass production, the Dymaxion House was also argued for by Fuller in terms of structure. If the house was built within the standards of aircraft industry, its structure was stressed like that of an aircraft. Fuller houses are based in tension, opposed to compression in which brick or stone masonry relies. His Tensegrity structures consisted in continuous webs of tensioned cables with compressed bars floating amid the web. This maximisation of components in tension makes all sense in a steel economy as this material has a better structural performance in tension than in compression. By building a compression mast in the centre and “hanging” the rest of the house , Fuller is maximising tension, meaning most of the structure can be built with thinner sections, using cables instead of tubes and therefore making large savings in material.

Teaming up with the aircraft industry for the construction of the Wichita house (1946 built prototype of the Dymaxion House) allowed him to get the house fabricated to aircraft standard. When the house was finished he claimed that there was no crafts involved in the fabrication process, everything had been fabricated with industrial mass production methods. “Anyone visiting the [aircraft] plant, wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the airplane parts and the parts being made for the house”.

The Wichita house is still relevant today at many levels, such as its engagement with the industrial mode of production of its time, but outdated in its conception and in its approach to fabrication for mass production of standardised goods is a model in crisis. It is now for our generation to design the Dymaxion House for the current shifting society to a post-Fordist paradigm. Is it a 3D printed house? In regards of this essay, it is something different. In order to clarify what direction we should follow this essay will evaluate the use of digital fabrication techniques in two case studies of buildings completed recently by Barcelona based practice Cloud 9, directed by AA unit master Enric Ruiz-Geli.

Digital fabrication in recent works by Cloud9 Architects

The Villa Nurbs project is a single family house in Empuriabrava (Barcelona). The practice designed a ceramic façade made of double curvature tiles generated by a generative process. The process of fabrication combined CNC techniques for making the moulds and metal tools that were then used at Toni Cumella’s atelier for the manufacturing of the tiles using traditional ceramic making techniques.

This essay considers this process of fabrication as typical of Piore and Sabel definition of Flexible Specialisation as it exemplifies how the model they propose is not necessarily arguing for going back to crafts but for bringing crafts forward. Cloud9 ceramic façade proves how the use of digital design and fabrication techniques can make crafts more relevant for the current building industry. It also refines Mario Carpo’s statement about the aim for variation in post-modern architecture that couldn’t be achieved by other means than expensive crafts until the irruption of digital fabrication. Not contradicting Carpo, but going beyond, the current scenario seems to offer a whole gradient of solutions for approaching variation that ranges from pure crafts to pure digital fabrication.

ROS, Lluis, 2009, [Amat painting ceramic tiles for Villa Nurbs] [online]

The ceramic façade also opens the debate about crafts as it blurs the border between crafts and industrial production, suggesting that we could consider also the designer behind the computer or the CNC milling machine as a craft man with digital tools. In 1968, David Pye defined crafts as the “workmanship of risk” in which the result was not predetermined but dependant on the skills of the workman as opposed to the “workmanship of certainty” of industrial mass production. Pye understands that the crafts are based in techniques and skills and the result is “at risk” at all time during the process. Branko Kolarevic picks up Pye’s point to define Digital Crafts on the base of uncertainty and risk as designers working with parametric or generative models and digital fabrication, don’t know the result of their design. Kolarevic argues that such designers have to go through iterations of design and fabrication like a craftsman. Kolarevic’s point is regarded in this essay as an argument in favour of bringing crafts back into the architectural conversation, integrating them in the current design work-flows.

Cloud9 used digital fabrication again to address variation in structural meshes in the Media-ICT building they completed in Barcelona in 2011. Those meshes have the functions of giving stability to the general structure made of four parallel porticoes in their perpendicular direction, transferring wind loads to the ground and supporting the ETFE panels of the façade. The mesh was designed through an iterative process of optimising material use and polivalency, in addressing the three structural functions mentioned. The resulting mesh featured bars of 120 different combinations of length and section. The joint of all those bars was designed using a parametric model that would draw a so called flower joint for each local node of the mesh, resulting in 18 different flowers that were manufactured using steel CNC milling.

In contrast with the façade meshes, the main structure of the building consists of four colossal porticoes made of trusses and trussed columns which hold the 40x40 m free slabs. That structure is symmetrical and homogeneous and the way in which it was fabricated does not differ much from that of 1962 Maravillas School Gymnasium in Madrid, by Alejandro de la Sota which, according to Geli inspires the structural approach of project. A similar work-flow of generative design at a global scale, parametric design of details and digital fabrication of components appears not to be scalable for the structure of the whole building and the architect ends using techniques of 1960s Spain, which can barely be considered an industrial society.

BAAN, Iwan, 2011 [Media-ICT building, Barcelona] [online]

The Media-ICT ETFE façades structural meshes are an example of the potential of digital fabrication techniques to deliver non standard architectures but also of their current limitations. It is still a long way back to what Buckminster Fuller achieved with the Dymaxion Houses in terms of engaging with mass production and Fordist society.

In regards of this essay, the work of Cloud9 is valuable as it addresses digital fabrication in a very pragmatical way, using it whenever it represents a clear advantage. The practice also has a variable scope of Digital Fabrication that goes from traditional crafts to structural steel CNC. However the pragmatist approach, which avoids to engage with Digital Fabrication in those areas in which its application is more problematic or less cost effective, stresses the limitations of such techniques.

Conclusion: How to engage with ‘post-Fordism’ as designers

The study of the Single Pour House and the avoidance of the issue of the joint, rule out 3D printing as a general solution for an architecture that assumes Flexible Specialisation as a production scenario. What are the tools and approaches of the post-Fordist architect? Enric Ruiz has shown us some of them. The techniques Cloud9 have used are not scalable and they are applied to very specific bits of his projects. However they are valuable as they face the challenge in the “real world” adding to a catalogue of techniques and processes that we, designers, should build collectively. 

Beyond that, this essay sees Buckminster Fuller as a guide. Although he argued for his Dymaxion House with an analogy of the car industry, his design resonates more with the shipyard industry, and faced with the challenge of actually building it, he teamed up with the aircraft industry. These industries differ from the car industry in the fact that within industrial mass production they also have to deal with degrees of specialisation and the non standard. The fact that Fuller worked with the aircraft industry cannot be takes as casual. In fact, Fuller’s approach to housing besides fabrication conceives the house as a consumer service rather than a property and that is a pure post-Fordist value. This essay can finish stating that in the end, despite his engagement with Fordist production model, Buckminster Fuller was already pointing towards post-Fordism, making his work even more relevant in the current scenario.

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PYE, David, 1968, The Nature and Art of Workmanship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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