The Instant House: A Model of Design Production with Digital Fabrication

Abstract

Through a novel design production system, we have developed the ability to produce highly customized wood framed buildings for rural communities in need of designed environments. A definitive need exists for a system that rapidly deploys small buildings such as schools, small hospitals and houses while tailored for a specific design within a community. This paper describes the relationship of digital fabrication to materials and rules for design and fabrication. By example, this paper presents a process of construction of a small house on-site from an initial computer model in sequential stages. Our case study in this paper will express possibilities with digital fabrication for building with designed variation.