Design: Ezio Blasetti, Danielle Willems, Pavlos Xanthopoulos. Fabrication: Decode Fab Lab

Digital Fabrication offers a lot of new options for a design that is different from the usual. In Greece, Digital Fabrication, at the moment, concerns creators on an experimental level. Only a few choose it to create quality pieces, distanced from the logic of mass production that automation usually offers. We asked Eftihis Efthimiou, biologist, designer and academic, to describe to us what is it that makes digital production unique.

Decode Fab Lab – Eftihis Efthimiou

The first certified Rhino Fab Studio in our country is characterised as a creative playground that aims to inform and teach about new techniques for designing prototypes. Eftihis Efthimiou is in charge of education and the main computational designer at Decode Fab Lab. He is mainly studying design automation systems in the post-digital condition. Despite architecture being his main discipline, he undertakes any design endeavour with the same amount of enthusiasm, whether it be product design, set design, live media or simply illustration.

Image: decodefablab.com

What are the advantages and disadvantages that Digital Fabrication brings to design? Does the cost of equipment and materials restrict experimentation?

Digital fabrication is an umbrella term that covers a great range of construction techniques that have been available for decades. By combining subtractive and additive manufacturing, that is, methods in which we subtract material (e.g. CNC) and ones where we add material (e.g. 3D printing), we are now able to create literally any form, in a controlled way, regardless of complexity or analysis issues. This is the first advantage of digital fabrication in design, a sense that anything is possible.

The second advantage is the potential for mass customization. Digital fabrication is bringing about a collapse of economies of scale, as the cost of building 1,000 identical objects can now be the same as that of 1,000 different variants, whether they are products or facade panels for a building.

In reality, however, the great revolution comes from a smaller branch of digital fabrication, rapid prototyping, that is, the creation of design drafts in real time. In this way, the designer can try, improve, and experience to some extent his designs, without having to go through a chain of industrial production, at a fraction of the cost.

Digital fabrication, therefore, increases the capabilities of the designer, liberates the options he has for possible solutions and expands design to greater depths. Honestly, I can not see any drawbacks, as it does not remove anything from the old design toolbox, but opens up new paths.

The cost of experimenting with digital fabrication is not a restrictive factor but it depends on each technology. A good table 3d printer now costs less than 1.000 euros while the cost of materials can even be negligible. Every architectural office for example could possess one. A CNC or a laser cutter, on the other hand, are significantly more expensive and require specialised knowledge to use them. The best solution to experiment and start from somewhere is to go to your nearest fab lab. Like it is with most things, digital fabrication is better done in company.

Athens Observatory 3D Print Model for ΝΕΟΝ and the exhibition «Adrián Villar Rojas - The Theater of Disappearance», 2017

Could local design find its means of expression and production through digital mediums? If so, what in your judgement would be the required tools (software, equipment, education and information)?

Let's compare two movies. One was shot in the 1960s and takes place in the then present, while the other is shot today but the plot takes place in the 1960s. The aesthetics and the image of the two films are completely different, and not simply because of the development of technical means. The main difference is that usually in a period film (such as the contemporary one in our example) you see a picture of a world that never existed, bursting with the fashion, design and architecture of the time it depicts. In the film that was actually shot in the 60s, on the other hand, you see, next to the material culture of the specific era, a plethora of scattered objects from the eras that preceded it. Cars from the 1940s, buildings worn out with 19th century technology frames, passers-by in old, everyday clothes that don't look like they came out of the fashion magazines of the time. An image of the real as opposed to an image of scenographic imagination. The same can be assumed for technological development. Only in narratives of techno-messianicism will you encounter a world where offices will operate exclusively with the most modern design tech and digital fabrication applications. In fact, what you will see is a superimposition of eras and techniques.

I think that for many years now Greek design has fully incorporated digital means, both on the creative and production level. Even the more conservative architectural offices, which break down the building by hand, resort to digital means, at least for arch vis, statistics or for the final measurement. In more progressive offices we notice a greater degree of incorporation with the embracing of modern techniques of computational design, BIM, simulation, VR etc. Regarding product design, both during the idea phase (form-finding) as well as implementation (mechanically, design of parts which depends on the construction technology), the objects pass through challenging digital paths, while, of course, we can not overlook the role of rapid prototyping in the r&d phase. In terms of production, I do not know of any company that uses moulds that have been made without digital fabrication at some stage. So, digital media is present.

The issue, therefore, is not whether digital media is being used but the level of knowledge of these tools and the degree to which their potential is being exploited. To a large extent, knowledge about tools comes through the self-education of designers, and not through academic involvement. And even if, through the internet, it is now easy to learn how to use design tools, this does not apply to digital fabrication.

“Knowledge by doing” and the culture of “making” are very important. This means that designers have to try by themselves to work with the tools, both digital and conventional ones. To cut with a laser or a CNS, to print, handle a robotic arm, cut a piece of wood on a circular saw, to screw a dozen of bolts. All this involvement creates a cognitive toolbox to which the designer can refer when they need to produce something.

All these things should be generously offered in universities. Both through open modelling workshops, with current equipment and staff that will help students construct their ideas, and through teaching digital media and fully integrating it into the curriculum of compositional courses, by people with fresh ideas and curiosity. The most rudimentary step is to hire a large number of new academic and scientific staff and funding, but at the same time, there’s a need for a lot of work regarding the curriculum.

Outside of universities, the institution of fab labs as training and experimentation centres, but also as an open toolbox at a neighbourhood level, should flourish more. At Decode, we try very hard to function like that. The most unpleasant outcome for fab labs is to be imprinted in people’s consciousness as a kind of 3d copy shop of the neighbourhood.

Now, in relation to the needs of the designer, I would not like to mention programs but I will say that, in general, a basic skillset requires knowledge of NURBS modelling & drafting, polygon modelling, volumetric modelling, computational design & analysis skills, visualization skills and knowledge at least of the basic digital manufacturing protocols (3d printing, laser cutting, CNC milling) and their limitations.

Mural for Athens Lodge Boutique Hotel, 2018 | Images: Olga Stefatou

Do you think that digital fabrication poses a threat to the role of the designer? Are there clear limits between computer and designer, and how do you predict this relationship will evolve in the future?

Forgive me but I think that this is a very anachronistic question at its base. I will explain myself. Allow me to start by quoting the famous phrase of Nicholas Negroponte in the late 90s: "Like air and drinking water, being digital will be noticed only in its absence, not by its presence. Face it - the Digital Revolution is over", by which he essentially proclaims the beginning of the post-digital era. In the post-digital world we belong to, the digital has entered into our lives completely, both into the realm of daily routine and the commonplace, leaving behind the glamour of revolution, avant-garde, etc. And this disenchantment is wonderful.

Digital fabrication has been established during the latest decades, in every branch of design, from architecture to product, industrial design etc. This has to do both with the technology of construction, which is digital in its vast majority, and in general with the medium that brings us in contact with the work. Our whole life is mediated and passed through the digital. The designs we produce are mainly experienced through screens, so it makes sense to produce them by similar methods. But, even if they are traditionally produced (1), by hand, from the moment they are produced in the present context, they are digital, at least in the sense of Hegelian antithesis. We have now tasted from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, we are aware of our nakedness.

So, based on the above, digital design is the context in which we operate, the medium through which we produce and the industry standards based on which we communicate. It is extremely difficult for me to see how something like this can threaten the role of the designer, without making one of the two following mistakes. The first is the invention of a technophobic paradigm, which I can only view as a defense against the need to adopt an ever-evolving toolbox (2). The second -and far more dangerous- is a viewing of design not as the practical conception of ideas, the invention of functions and forms, a constant play with concepts and, let’s say it with no guilt, geometry, but as a process of simply placing lines on paper. I can not communicate with this point of view.

In any case, digital design is a medium, a tool for thinking, like any other. Why do we never ask the question if the pencil threatens the role of the designer, if the ruler dictates geometries and concepts or if the compass suppresses the poetic uncertainty of the free hand? Why do we not view paper as a corrosive mediation?

As for the limits between designer and computer, what are the limits between a virtuoso pianist and a grand piano? Or foreman and bulldozer? Where does the farmer’s hand end and where does the hoe begin or where does the biologist’s eye end and the microscope begin? Where does the mouth end and the tooth begin? I can not tell easily and certainly not without repeating myself. But what I see for the future is the absolute blurring of boundaries. Integration of the digital will only grow, the tools will become more intuitive, and what we have learned about digital design will be overturned. Words like CAD, BIM, computational and volumetric will soon be used only in the context of museums, like the pantograph. All we have to do is enjoy them as long as we have them by our side.

(1). Here by the term “traditional”, I mean paper even though “traditional” could also mean Autocad, Photoshop and the whole of the conventional toolbox of the previous 30 years.

(2). To this I can respond that I constantly find myself in the position of learning new tools, searching for new ways to perform the same tasks as before, and fueling an insatiable curiosity about anything that is new. It is constantly awkward and life-giving, and it’s for sure the only way to not let the times surpass us.

Guts Light – Brain Axis Project, 2019

We sincerely thank Eftihis Efthimiou for his elaborate responses.

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