High Definition: Zero Tolerance in Design and Production

A pioneering title, High Definition explores the onslaught of new and highly accurate digital metrology tools in large- and small-scale 3-D scanning and 3-D modelling. Capable of measuring space to an accuracy of less than 1 mm, these tools offer unprecedented precision for the development and interrogation of design before, during and post production. Over the last decade or so, the array of designers’ digital tools to propose and make their ideas have evolved significantly, but the absence of high-accuracy, zero-tolerance design production has often remained the missing piece between design and fulfilment. Innovative technologies are thus substantially recalibrating the way that designers operate in the world between the drawn and the made, having the power to transform the architect’s role from that of visualiser to one that is intensely involved with the realisation of objects and buildings. High Definition will examine the capabilities of advanced technologies in design production through their impact on design theory, practice and greater levels of collaboration between design and manufacturing. It will permeate the entangled world between means and meaning and unravel a new understanding between the representation and production of architectural design.

•  Contributors include: Philip Beesley, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, Gehry Technologies, Ruairi Glynn, Zaha Hadid Architects, ScanLAB Projects, Territorial Agency, Skylar Tibbits, Mike Webb.

Bob Sheil is?Professor in Architecture and Design through Production at UCL, and has been?Director of The Bartlett School of Architecture since 2014. He is a founding partner of sixteen*(makers), whose work in collaboration with Stahlbogen GmbH '55/02' won a RIBA award for design in 2010, and also includes a ten year catalogue of experimental projects both internationally published and exhibited. He is an educator, critic, researcher, collaborator and practitioner, as well as an experimental designer who is fascinated by transgression between making, craft, and technology, in architectural design practice.?He is the author of multiple book chapters, refereed papers, and articles on design, making and technology. He has co-designed and built 6 significant artefacts/built works, and been internationally exhibited on 11 occasions. He has edited five books, including three issues of Architectural Design; Design through Making (2005), Protoarchitecture (2008), and the forthcoming High Definition: Negotiating Zero Tolerance (2014), an AD Reader Manufacturing the Bespoke published in 2012, and 55/02: A sixteen*(makers) Monograph (also 2012). In 2011, he Co-Chaired the highly acclaimed international conference 'FABRICATE' with Ruairi Glynn, for which he also co-edited the substantial parallel publication. FABRICATE has now become an internationally established conference brand, with the 2014 event hosted by ETH Zurich.