Beyond Optimization: Interaction as a Means to Resituate Digital Fabrication

In this case study, researcher and professor Stefana Parascho proposes that interactive and improvisational robotic fabrication can be a means to counteract what she perceives to be one of digital fabrication’s more detrimental fixations: optimization. In contrast to the top-down, optimization-centric approaches that have long dominated architecture-oriented digital fabrication, Parascho advocates for bottom-up, open-ended fabrication processes that can dissolve the traditional roles of humans and machines. Parascho believes that such a reconfiguration of human-machine relationships will help to create more flexible kinds of digital fabrication that can help researchers continue to expand and innovate the field.