Model-Make-Measure: Connecting the Studio to the Workshop

University College London at Here East, a new manufacturing center in east London opened in 2018, hosts a new master’s degree in design for manufacture uniquely within a school of architecture. Equipped with industrial robots, computer numerical control (CNC) milling and turning machines for fabrication and structural frames, large-scale metrology, and climate chambers for testing, UCL at Here East strives to cultivate an environment with students at the interface between a design studio and the point of industrial production. How might the well-established methods for manufacturing in automotive and aerospace be used in construction? This session will present an educator’s approach of “model-make-measure,” showing how the course connects students with the properties of materials used to construct buildings and the fabrication processes these materials undergo existing as nominal digital design intent. Examples will show how this approach has suggested novel design outcomes and ways of working, offering skills transferrable to the construction industry.