Bridging The Gap Between Academia and Practice: A case study for collaborative digital design to fabrication workflow for interlocking kit-of-parts

Abstract

The implementation of digital design workflows is an opportunity to facilitate the knowledge exchange between the industry and research, required in the face of the climate emergency. This paper presents outcomes of a series of digital design to fabrication workshops, resulting in three-party collaboration between an international architectural design firm, a university, and a global food producer. The paper presents an initial step towards an integrated material system based on an abundantly available industrial by-product of sugar manufacturing. The idea of topological interlocking has been used as a concept to define components-based system for the novel material, tested in a scaled prototype with university students