Gehry's fundamental view towards technology seems to centered around whatever it takes to get the form into a buildable state. Physical models are still where most of the exploration takes place, which are then digitized.

Massie's approach (based on my limited knowledge of his work) seems to be using the digital fabrication process as a means of exploration, and discovering ways in which this process can be exploited.

Mind you that FOG is a big office doing big buildings and Massie is a practicing academic with a few graduate students, so there is an issue of scale.

Thanks for the response adso! I think FOG has something to contribute towards the way buildings get built. He's the only one building in this nondescript geometrical way. Other blob-ers are still making computer images. FOG's way of designing may still be fundamentally out of the realm of the digital but the forms are refigned in the computer, and get built!

Hi
Clamshell please remember that the great advange with CAD is that the 3D inviroment are enough testbench, 3D make a garentie that the thing can be build in zero gravity. But I wonder about the openess of these very important issues -- is there a will to share to develob to create those new jobs.
I been in projects where first the raw building was made, then a group of engineers measured the building from the center of the building , but even the contractor was one of the big ones, what came out as "computer drawings" was plain 2D sections not horisontal ones like floor plans as this was about "digitizing" the shape of a newly build raw structire , -- but the 2D sections , sort of cake-cutting , was that huge a problem for the builders , that they never was used for real in filling out the measured spaces.
What I am on to is, that it seem that "computer drawings" , that linking the production onto the 3D drawings, are even at the big company a troubled and very diversed thing. In the example I point to the "will" was there and the drive shuld be there , as 2.5 D milling was avaible , but becaurse the lack of experience and a cramped attitude towerds the design order, then the interiours that othervise shuld have profited from advanced 3D options, was reduced into taking profit from more flexible mashinery ,just doing the carpenterwork as how it allway's was done but by a CNC controlled router , but in that way loosing the obvious gains it would habve been, if first the 3D CAD drawings had been made and _then the raw building.

Per Corell, help me out, I think you're trying to make a point about the nature of digital methodology in building and your concern about it. Could you try not to type so fast so that I can read your words?

(Now that i read this again, i think i might be restating what adso said but maybe its still worthwile...)

I have limited knowledge of both offices' ways of bringing their designs into built reality, it seems that FOG seems to be more concerned with how the office produces the computer and their documents/BIM to produce a very non-standard design that can be built using methods that are as close to standard as possible, presumably to keep the costs down. Massie seems to be more interested in throwing out the standards and finding the most direct method of going from design to building, for example, minimizing contractor work and CD's by actually fabricating formwork in his shop and delivering it to the site, ready to assemble and pour. Both seem to have the benefit of lowered costs (relative to the non-standard nature of the designs), and both seem to be looking for the easiest way to have their designs built. Like adso said, Massie seems to be exploring fabrication as way to change construction methods (with sort a renegade DIY builder atitude), while FOG isn't concerned with changing construction methods. Massie's intentions seem to be aligned with the modernist spirit of exploring these technologies in order to make these methods more accessible to the general public someday, which i dont think FOG is concerned with in his work.

Israel K. once mentioned something about how SHoP in NYC is changing their construction documents to better meet fabrication and material needs and how this contrasts with Massie's work which might actually be more like full scale model-making.

good topic!

I like your response Doug Johnson. Everyone has read about the frustrations contractors have had in building Gehry's projects. Even though FOG has has handed over digital information directly to contractors and has cost controls in place, perhap real exploration into the paradigm of building still isn't addressed as much in Gehry's work as it is with Massie. Gehry is definitely not a design-build office.

clamshell my concern about method is quite serious. There are avaible digital controlled manufactoring, the acounting shuld be quite clear as what cost is cost pr. unit cut, plus cost ,profit, of materials --- as long as we agrea that with digital it is a very efficient manufactoring process then everything shuld indicate that computers ofcaurse shuld do it better , ------ but what happen the whole issue become a matter of codes and pyramide building, In other situations I guess, as the one I refere that only to well describe the lost oppotunities in an actural build, only show how frustrating it is, as a computer generated building part, fit perfect in today's projecting, the tradisional architecture app.
A frame can be a block, the block can contain automated calculations for cut meter of just that frame. It's number location age whatever, -- now I wonder if Gehry's work as smooth, from 3D drawing, strait to production ,bank account.