Location: San Antonio, Texas

Year: 2010

Digital technologies are nearly ubiquitous in today’s AEC industry however they have had little transformative impact on masonry design or construction.  Although masonry has one of the oldest and richest histories of application in the built environment it is too often seen as a conventional material with limited possibilities in today’s design world of ever increasing complexity.  The reality is, however, that with the development of proper methodologies and protocols masonry is one of the most exciting materials to be considered through the lens of digital technologies in design and construction.

This research broadly considers the question of new modes of linking the representation of a structure to the actual process of physical making through advanced parametric CAD and digital construction technologies.  This approach implies the refinement of the traditionally understood idea of CAD/CAM, or digital manufacturing, and begins to formulate a new direction of Digitally Augmented Making [DAM] paradigms, or in this case Digitally Augmented Masonry, where anthropological design and fabrication activities are enhanced through digital means.

Project Team: Russell Gentry & Andres Cavieres