Fabrication Information Modeling (FIM)

Fabrication is today a rapidly evolving concept transitioning from traditional assembly of differentiated parts, to file-to-fabrication construction efforts, and even towards guidance of material synthesis on-the-fly and growth of biological agents into structures. Advances in the fields of materials engineering, robotic automation, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology open up opportunities for incorporating new physical world information, from material, machine, and environment, within and throughout digital design and manufacturing processes. Challenges arise when faced with the inclusion of physical media information at multiple dimensions and from diverse disciplines within traditional design tools. Specifically, when aiming at describing novel computational strategies for material-, time- and scale-dependent phenomena. Fabrication Information Modeling (FIM) addresses such challenges through the development of design processes and exemplar projects able to operate across media, disciplines, and scales, incorporating concepts of multi-dimensionality, media-informed computation, and trans-disciplinary data integration. With FIM and FIM-driven projects I aim to contribute to the field of digital design and fabrication by enabling feedback workflows where (1) materials are designed rather than selected; where (2) the question of how information is passed across spatiotemporal scales is central to design generation itself; where (3) modeling at each level of resolution and representation is based on various methods and carried out by various media; and finally, where (4) virtual and physical considerations coexist as equals.

Committee members:    

Prof. Neri Oxman

Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, Director of The Mediated Matter Group Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Prof. Markus Buehler

Professor and Department Head of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Director of the Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Prof. Pamela Silver

Elliot T. and Onie H. Adams Professor of Biochemistry and Systems Biology, Founding Faculty of the Wyss Institute, Director of the Silver Lab at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University.