{"id":58782,"date":"2015-05-01T10:17:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T10:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metropolismag.com\/projects\/pioneer-digital-fabrication-heralds-machine-made-revolution-architecture\/"},"modified":"2021-08-11T01:10:02","modified_gmt":"2021-08-11T01:10:02","slug":"pioneer-digital-fabrication-heralds-machine-made-revolution-architecture","status":"publish","type":"metro_project","link":"https:\/\/metropolismag.com\/projects\/pioneer-digital-fabrication-heralds-machine-made-revolution-architecture\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pioneer of Digital Fabrication Heralds the Machine-Made Revolution in Architecture"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s another monotonously sunny day in Santa Monica, and Andreas Froech glides up on his bicycle. He greets me with an easy smile, a little breathless from his ride, and takes off his helmet, not bothering to fix his hair. We talk over coffee in the courtyard of the Frank Gehry\u2013designed Edgemar, where, despite the California drought, the fountain burbles with relentless optimism. Edgemar\u2014the oh-so-L.A. mini-mall-on-acid completed in 1989\u2014seems the perfect venue for us to talk about technology, making things, and other adventures in architecture.<\/p>\n
The signatures of Froech\u2019s expertise can be seen in works by architects like Greg Lynn, Zaha Hadid, Hitoshi Abe, Patrick Tighe, and others working on the outer edges of digital practice. Trained as an architect, Froech is one of a rare breed of designer-technologists who have been forging a link between the worlds of robotic fabrication and architecture. Since he first began working with industrial robots in 2006, Froech has been mapping the territory for how this technology can be implemented in design. Spanning the birth and coming of age of computational design, his pathbreaking career is one of the reasons architecture and robotics can be articulated in the same breath.<\/p>\n
I had asked that we meet at Froech\u2019s fabrication shop, but there was one problem\u2014there is no shop, not anymore. Just a few years ago, Froech had helmed a 20,000-square-foot fabrication hub out of a Gardena, California, industrial park, a few miles away from\u00a0where Elon Musk\u2019s Space X operates. Here, he ran four large Nachi robots\u2014the same multi-axis robot arms used in the auto industry, which Froech had repurposed for design applications. They were the hardware that powered Machineous, the custom fabrication and research-and-development company Froech founded in 2008. It closed this year, only to resurface as Machineous Consultants<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now, for the first time, Froech finds himself unburdened by the heavy responsibilities and long hours concomitant of running a shop. \u201cI wanted to free myself up,\u201d Froech says, explaining his intentions. Machineous was reaching a point where it was attracting the kinds of repetitive, off-the-shelf projects the 46-year-old fabricator isn\u2019t so interested in. Being the \u201cshop guy\u201d presented other limitations. By the time designs would get to him, they had already gone through complex chains of decision-making that he hadn\u2019t been involved\u00a0in. This could mean problems and inefficiencies in fabrication, and, of course, a lot of time spent fixing them. All these potential mishaps could be avoided, he realized, if he were more embedded in the design team.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Seeking to get back to the center of design, Froech made a radical decision. He shuttered the shop, moved the robots into storage, and pursued an alternate, almost back-to-basics directive. Doing so would allow him to return to what he had been doing, namely, troubleshooting new design inroads for robotic machinery: \u201cOriginally, I had to come up with my own way of thinking about these machines and teach myself how to use them.\u201d He explains further, \u201cThe first robot guys could tell you a lot about making cars, but they didn\u2019t know how to do the things I was interested in. There\u2019s really an art to how a robot acts on a piece, in how you convert code to movement.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s this unique approach\u2014the mechanic-tinkerer meets computer scientist\u2014that has drawn people to Froech. \u201cAndreas is a pretty unique character, and an\u00a0important one,\u201d says Greg Lynn, the Los Angeles architect and one of the earliest adopters of computing in design. As one of Lynn\u2019s graduate students at Columbia University during the mid-1990s, Froech was among the earliest\u00a0practitioners\u00a0to investigate digital fabrication processes. \u201cHe was always interested in how to bridge that gap between the computer model and the building,\u201d Lynn says. \u201cHe\u2019s one of the first in the world to be doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n Froech was working for Greg Lynn Form <\/a>when, in 1996, Lynn was invited to teach at UCLA\u2019s Department of Architecture and Urban Design. Froech followed him there, and it wasn\u2019t long before he spotted the CNC machine at the engineering school. According to Lynn, Froech was the \u201cthe first instructor to teach with a CNC machine,\u201d which he installed in the architectural school in 1997 and operated using a then-rarified system\u2014later adopted by a handful of elite institutions, including ETH Zurich and the Applied Arts Vienna.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A decade later, in 2006, Froech bought his own robot and the first incarnation of Machineous was born. Armed with a robot, his next challenge was finding clients. \u201cI was literally going from office to office and saying, \u2018I have a robot. What can I do for you?\u2019\u201d he recalls. His first independent commission came from Lynn, whose work employed complex geometries that could only be realized through the use of robots. He asked Froech to undertake fabricating the Blobwall<\/a>, which would represent a watershed moment\u00a0in computer-aided design. Lynn had originally designed the freestanding assemblage of hollow plastic rotomolded units for a house project that came to naught. A prototype was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and was later adopted by Panelite as a custom wall system.<\/p>\nFroech, 46, founder of Machineous Consultants, is a pioneer of digital fabrication.<\/h4>\n
Courtesy Andreas Froech<\/h4>\n
Greg Lynn Form, Blobwall<\/strong>
\nFroech\u2019s first proper commission, Blobwall was developed by L.A. architect Greg Lynn, who had taught Froech at Columbia in the mid-1990s.\u00a0Lynn\u2019s approach\u00a0was computational, and, as such, each of the hollow units interlock with mind-boggling precision, obviating the need for any binding agents. \u201cThe project was designed and developed with Andreas\u2019s capabilities in mind,” Lynn says. “He is able to communicate fundamental principles to architects so they are better designers.\u201d<\/h4>\nCourtesy\u00a0Machineous\u00a0Consultants<\/h4>\n
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