Can manufacturing achieve the efficient reproduction of culturally frozen artefacts?

With the propagation of 3D printing technologies during the past two decades, the conservation of this architectural screen may potentially be found in the performative analysis of existing Mashrabiya in order to inform new parametric models. These can then be subsequently programmed into site-specific variants and produced via large-scale 3D printing. As digital fabrication technologies continue to proliferate throughout architectural design discourse and practice (Kolarevic 2003), the conception of a digital tectonic (Beesley and Seebohm 2000) becomes a powerful agent in the conservation of a historic architectural legacy.

The authors are interested in the implications for new digital craftsmen and fabricators whose knowledge can be harnessed in order to program relevant input data to generate assemblies that not only support performance from a functional vantage point but also inform a cultural trajectory. Interesting questions emerge regarding the replacement of manual labour with digital programmers: Will cultures allow for the replacement of the craftsman with the programmer? Can the cultural interactions be distilled down to quantifiable parameters that drive CNC equipment?

Notably, the authors are not directly interested in replicating historic Mashrabiya. In contrast, the aim is not to achieve the efficient reproduction of culturally frozen artefacts but instead to contribute to the evolution of the architecture, thus fostering new knowledge acquisition through observation, manufacture, and recursive analysis.

In the work presented in this paper, 3D-printed forms are developed parametrically and analysed. While this is a fully digital process, the work seeks to reconcile traditional cultures with contemporary manufacturing in the preservation of a traditional architectural archetype. This work additionally seeks to alleviate the impact industrialization has had on traditional culture and artisans, stabilizing the architectural construction and enabling future instantiations of Mashrabiya.