Digital Manufacture of Metals

More than two centuries of research and development have produced a vast choice of metallic materials and manufacturing processes, useful in giving form and structure to architecture. This chapter aims to consider the state of manufacturing technologies in the light of possibilities opened up by digital innovation. The analysis of fabrication technologies examines production processes in order to identify unit manufacturing processes within the succession of processes. Two projects are examined thoroughly. Frank Barkow and Regine Leibinger designed the gatehouse of the Trumpf factory near Stuttgart with a wide metal roof, protecting the open space to welcome visitors and employees. The space is not interrupted by the glass parallelepiped of the building, whose vertices are the pillars which support the 65 ft (20 m) of overhang of the roof. The transparency of the body of the building, which houses the reception and waiting room, is not immaterial, but rather emphasises the properties of the glass in the search of a semi-transparent effect. The way the structure is built exploits the possibilities of digital manufacturing and intends to be the visiting card, the demonstration of the expressive and constructive capacity of the machine tools produced by Trumpf itself as applied to creating the building which gives access to the factory. Manufacturing involved intensive mass change NC processes with cutting and punching, deformations with bending as well as the final assembly. Randall Stout won the international design competition for the expansion of the Art Gallery of Alberta, Canada. The exhibition spaces are highlighted by juxtapositions and intersections between two blocks: the grounding of the units of the building, accentuated in the cladding in local stone, and the complete transparency of the atrium, intersected by the sinuous form inspired by the aurora borealis, a characteristic of the latitudes of Alberta. This form has no centre, starting point or point of symmetry on which the eye can rest. The morphology, observed from different angles in crossing the piazza, the approach path or the atrium, appears changeable to the observer. The firm of Randall Stout Architects modelled in three dimensions the design of the complex geometry of the aurora borealis and of the building and the numerous intersections between the two using Rhinoceros (Rhino) software. From the Rhino model, Empire Iron Works created the Building Information Modeling of the aurora borealis in Tekla Structures. Zahner’s Design Assist Group imported and translated the geometric model into a Pro/ENGINEER parametric model. The parametric model of the secondary structure and of the cladding panels integrates the requirements of the manufacturing process and the assembly tolerances, specific to the ZEPPS™ system, and automatically generates the subsystems of the joints and of the panels necessary to make the complete roof.