The impact of digital technologies on the practice of architecture is having a profound influence on today’s emerging architectural practitioners. Exploring the impact of information technology on new design methods and digital fabrication techniques will lead to a revisiting of traditional design processes. The potential for new avenues of collaboration and renewed interest in materials are challenging the role of the architect once removed from the building process. The translation from digital to analog is allowing one to rethink the use of computer as an instrument focused on the process of making. This research seeks to explore the relationship afforded to today’s designers as information technology redefines “visualization” from solely a digital or virtual environment into the real, the tangible. The direct connection between design and production is afforded by a “file to factory” process whereby the digital model provides the needed information for the designer, engineering, contractor, and manufacturer. The digital model now serves as the sole source of building information and is a collection of material components allowing the “modeling process” to move beyond merely a visualization aid and into a realm of material understanding. Exploiting the opportunities inherent in a digital design process, design information becomes fabrication instruction allowing the architect once again to be immersed in making instead of drawing. The continuum from design to fabrication offered by a digital process reconnects the material nature of architecture in the digital realm.

Stacy Norman is a registered architect and has been teaching in the area of digital design since the fall of 1999. Mr. Norman holds a Bachelor of Design from the University of Florida and Masters of Architecture from Columbia University. Since 2002 his interest in digital design has come to include the area of computer-aided design and fabrication. In the fall of 2003, Stacy Norman was awarded the Paul Rudolph Visiting Assistant Professor of Architecture at Auburn University’s School of Architecture and is currently a Visiting Professor of Digital Fabrication at Auburn and is responsible for teaching and research that involves the dissemination of digital technology and digital fabrication. Fabricating Reality is the process of reconciling the digital and the material.