Mixed Reality Fabrication

Gwyllim Jahn

Mixed Reality Fabrication challenges the conventional focus on automation and precision in digital fabrication, instead advocating for approaches that bridge the gap between digital design and the wide tolerances, improvisation and non-uniform materials common to traditional craft practices. It promotes a humanist philosophy of technology, emphasizing the value of skilled labour and craft traditions while revealing opportunities for reduced documentation complexity, accelerated knowledge transfer, waste reduction, and increased design freedom. 

Making by hand in mixed reality opens a broad space of designs characterised by stochasticity, formed curves, networks and field conditions that would otherwise be impractical to draw and build. Several case-study projects from the scale of sculptural pieces to small pavilions illustrate how working within immersive mixed reality environments can empower both novices and experts to realize complex digital designs through subjective interpretation of simple digital models, demonstrating the potential of mixed reality to reshape the relationship between designing and making. 

With Contributions From
Vivian Mitsogianni, Cameron Newnham, Nick van den Berg.