Ault, M., 2024.

Digital Tectonics - Knitted Stitch as a Proliferated Component System

The pressing importance of sustainable consumption of energy and natural resources in light of the climate and environmental emergency together with worldwide investment and academic research in the field, mirrored by UK government priorities for advancement in manufacturing expertise. Amongst other initiatives, this is illustrated the Transforming Construction Challenge through UK Research and Innovation with a fund of £170M to be invested before 2025. This provides a context and need for research into future materials and fabrication techniques which is supported by the importance placed on this by the discipline.

This research practice explores creative and imaginative design application in novel formal expression, developed through digital simulation and physical prototyping leading to 1:1 architectural scale installations of novel and creative formal response.

This speculative, exploratory research has demonstrated the potential/ capacity to influence the academy, industry and profession of architecture. The need for this research lies in the important investigation of how our understandings of behaviours in materials/ material systems can be leveraged by computational methods within design practice, to enable a return to the centrality of craft and creative, integrative, performance driven and sustainable architectural design.

Detailed analysis and summary of the research field, the context within which the research exists, has been undertaken through review of key bodies of work and precedent, demonstrating authority. Similarly, architectural theories and architectural design methods, in addition to generic research methods, have been employed to structure the undertaking of the research and its communication, demonstrating a considered and rigorous process.

A variety of exploratory, divergent, practical design techniques and approaches were employed in early design development leading to the evaluative and convergent approaches and the practical delivery of final, synthetic design projects - site specific, publicly exhibited architectural installations.