Article:

Design strategies that employ digital and material imprecision to achieve estheticinnovation exhibit high potential to transform the current precision-orientedpractices of computation and digital fabrication in architecture. However, suchstrategies are still in their infancy. We present a design method facilitatingintentionally-imprecise esthetic explorations within the framework of digitaldesign and robotic single-point incremental forming. Our method gives access tothe esthetic fine-tuning of molds from which architectural objects are cast.Semi-precise computational operations of extending, limiting, deepening andshallowing the geometrical deformations of the mold through robot toolpathfine-tuning are enabled by a digital toolkit featuring parametric modeling,surface curvature analyses, photogrammetry, digital photography and bitmapimage retouching and painting. Our method demonstrates the shift of focus fromgeometric accuracy and control of material behaviors towardsintentionally-imprecise digital explorations that yield novel esthetic features ofarchitectural designs. By demonstrating the results of applying our method in thecontext of an exploration-driven design process, we argue that imprecision can beequally valid to accuracy, opening a vast, excitingly unknown territory formaterial-mediated esthetic explorations within digital fabrication. Suchexplorations can interestingly alter the esthetic canons and computational designmethods of digital architecture in the nearest future.