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The first overview of the increasingly popular practice of uniting digital design and fabrication technologies with building techniques. Includes over 30 examples by leading contemporary architects and studios, full of exciting new ideas and possibilities for tomorrow´s large and small-scale buildings.

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Prototyping is an essential part of the designers repertoire. Designers prototype their projects to test them, structurally, aesthetically, technically. Whether the prototype works or not is not the point: prototyping is the revelatory process through which the designer gains insight. There are three reasons why contemporary prototyping techniques are transforming the way architects design and build: 1) at a miniature scale, prototyping aids the architect in the presentation to clients of complex spatial ideas; 2) prototyping empowers the architect-designer to test and prove a buildings feasibility, leading to more open-minded construction solutions; 3) whether additive (3D printing) or subtractive (robotic milling), prototyping can lead to unexpected and exciting new possibilities within design as a whole, across design disciplines, thus blurring the boundaries between them in highly creative ways. The book has four sections: an introduction that charts the rise of prototyping in design history, more specifically in architecture; an overview of techniques; a survey section featuring 30 projects, each presented through texts drawn from first-hand interviews, on-site photographs and drawings; and a reference section, which includes a glossary of technical terms.

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Mark Burry is Professor of Innovation (Spatial Information Architecture) at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia, where he is also Director of the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory and Director of the Design Research Institute. He is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow and Member of the Advisory Board of Gehry Technologies in Los Angeles and has collaborated with leading international architectural and engineering practices. Burry is probably best known for his work on Antoni Gaudí´s Sagrada Família in Barcelona, where he is Executive Architect and Researcher, and has been working for thirty years on the realisation of the completion of Gaudí´s vision through computer-aided techniques.
www.wiley.com/extras/scripting.

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