Physical Design Co. – Putting the ‘fab’ in ‘prefab’.

The description of the Physical Design company, which promises to ‘3D Print’ ‘real houses’, is impressive to the untrained eye, but to make sure I asked our house p2p-architectural expert Eric Hunting for his comments.

First a general description, then the commentary by Eric.

From Daniel Smithwick in the Mass Customization blog:

“The central idea behind Physical Design Co. is to provide consumers with easy-to-use online tools that engage them in the design and manufacturing process and enables them to become the producers of their own architectural-scale designs. Our web platform also allows consumers to utilize local manufacturing via our distributed fabrication network which not only reduces carbon emissions, but it also strengthens local economies. Essentially, we’re re-thinking how our built environment is designed and constructed – with the Physical Design Co, online users, whether they live in rural China, or they are busy professionals interested in design, they can now play an active and participatory role in the built world around them.

How is this different to existing companies in the field like Ponoko, Replicator or Shapeways?

DS: The Physical Design Co distinguishes itself in two ways. First, we provide consumers with the ability to custom design, and have fabricated, life-size and inhabitable scale structures, as opposed to only hand-held items like fashion accessories and table-top objects. We’re interested in offering consumers more than just personalization; our web platform engages the consumer in the design, manufacturing and delivery process – giving them the tools to make smarter decisions about how they impact the built and natural environment.

Second, we have developed a patent-pending technology which automatically translates the user’s design into a unique kit of interlocking, easy-to-assemble parts. For example, let’s say you wanted to design a backyard shed. Instead of having to digitally model all of the individual parts, consider how they all attached together, worry about the structural integrity and verify that it is indeed possible to put it all together, with the Physical Design Co., all you have to do is model the shape of your design. Our technology automatically and digitally translates the design shape into a kit-of-parts that can then be CNC fabricated and subsequently interlock together without the need for nails, screws or any additional hardware.”

Commentary by Eric Hunting:

“A spin-off of recent MIT work on the use of the fab lab’s new generation of machine tool technology in architectural applications, start-up venture Physical Design Co. offers the ambitious service of converting customer designs in the free Google SketchUp program into prefabricated kits for real large-scale structures. Currently limited to ‘accessory structures’ such as garden sheds and back-yard office/studios somewhat similar to other Modernist prefab microhouses such as Edgar Blazona’s Modular Dwellings, the venture seems to aspire toward eventual full-scale house production capability, through this may be hindered by acceptance of its unusual building technology.

Key to the business concept is exclusive software that translates the simple geometric primitives-based model data of SketchUp into a surface model that is then converted into a virtual kit of parts based on a puzzle-fit joinery system suited to production in plywood using CNC table routers. This building system seems identical to that developed for the Larry Sass/MIT Printed House project ; a demonstration New Orleans ‘shotgun’ style house recently shown at MoMA. Company co-founder Daniel Smithwick is a graduate researcher who co-lead that very project.

Physical Design Co. seems to be at the bleeding edge of a fab-on-demand start-up trend established with ventures like Ponoko, ambitiously seeking to push this to a whole new scale of structures, products, and complexity. However, it has yet to face the challenges of a recalcitrant building industry with a compulsive fear of and resistance to everything new that all proponents of new building technology from at least the start of the 20th century on have desperately struggled with. For its business model to excel, it must break-through to full-scale housing but will likely face an up-hill battle getting there. However, the potential application to relief and military housing is very plain and this could be a critical venue through which this venture can circumvent the traditional barriers to acceptance. Stage and movie set fabrication is also another route where this could have remarkable impact. It would not surprise me if there are people in that industry already looking at this and chomping at the bit.

Though very impressive from a technical standpoint, the puzzle-fit building system employed by Physical Design Co. does have some key limitations. At present, it can only produce self-contained designs which, though infinitely variable ‘up-front’ and demountable, are extremely limited in later adaptability. Components are modular, but not necessarily interchangeable or standardized across multiple designs and evolution with expansion or modification through later-designed parts has yet to be demonstrated. This seems, though, more a limitation of the freely-custom design than of the system itself. Finishing of these structures further complicates this. At present, the fabrication technique used for these primary building structures has not been brought to the level of the finishing, which still requires the application of conventional finishing materials that use the plywood surface as an underlayment -and American-made plywood has it’s own issues in terms of latent toxicity of some products. In some ways this is a 21st century way of building 20th century architecture, devoid of the free adaptiveness and technology-integration of plug-in architecture. This technology confronts us with a key question; is a house in the contemporary context still appropriately considered a discrete artifact that can be fabbed whole -much as they have been for the past century by more primitive means- or as an interactively adaptive assemblage coalescing into a habitat and dynamically responsive to increasing paces of lifestyle change? Many applications of fabber technology to architecture -such as Contour Crafting – seem to present this same question. Many in the community of developers of the new digital fabrication technology are still thinking about ‘products’ in an Industrial Age context, even as the very tools they are developing are obsolescing that perspective. We are, in a sense, striving to fab sports cars in an age when the concept of the car itself is slipping toward anachronism.

Be that as it may, Physical Design Co. represents a fascinating new foray into the as yet uncharted territory of applied digital architectural fabrication. Though it remains hard to predict the nature of the impact of this technology, that there will be dramatic impact seems certain.” (via email, April 2009)

Leave A Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.