Training for Evolving. The Architectural Project from CAD to CAM

Abstract

Digital tools have considerably expanded the possibilities of managing transformation and architectural construction projects, offering the opportunity to obtain virtual models that can also approximate projects behaviour before the construction step. The new digital frontiers, however, do not stop at predicting what will be, as they enter the construction process: in the digital fabrication era, the role of architects and designers takes on the new and unprecedented responsibility of the constructive processuality, more and more governed by the machines, that is invoked in the CAM, the Computer Aided Machine, the process that leads the designed forms towards their realization passing from the definition of the production systems and equipment, to the definition of all the parameters in relation to the material and tools to be used. Which training course will allow future architects to be ready for such work scenarios? The paper develops the previously defined theme also through the description of experiences carried out within the degree course in Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Bari. Project work was integrated with an intense laboratory activity carried out in different locations and more recently at the FabLab Poliba, the Digital Manufacturing Laboratory of the Polytechnic University of Bari.