| Title |
Building Facade Prototyping by Fused Granular Fabrication (FGF) |
| DOI |
https://doi.org/10.5659/JAIK.2022.38.12.171 |
| Keywords |
FGF (Fused Granular Fabrication) ; FGF (Fused Granular Fabrication) ; Prototyping ; Facade ; Design-Build ; |
| Abstract |
As complex forms of building facades and 3D printing technology in architecture prevails, many efforts have been made to demonstrate the
implementation of 3D printing for different types of architectural works such as buildings, pavilions, facades, interior partitions, prototypes
and products. Ninety examples were collected and analyzed from online sources that indicated PLA was used for the experimental stage of
fabrication studies in spite of its weakness against code compliance mainly due to its relatively easier application for large-scale robotic
fabrication. Five precedents exemplifying plastic additive manufacturing were selected and reviewed to discuss the plastic feedstock types and
equipment for large-scale production. For 3D printing fabrication of building facades, Fused Granular Fabrication (FGF) utilizing extruders
with pellet-type plastic gained prominence. From this background, a design-build graduate seminar course aimed to integrate digital design and
FGF fabrication of building facade elements as shading devices took place over a 14-week semester. From this course, two prototyping
projects were developed and fabricated with the FGF method by two groups of students involving after series of 3D printing tutorials,
case-studies, application to exercises, and individual proposals by FDM. This study illustrated the sequential processes of design-build
experiments and evaluated final prototypes with the proposed criteria in four categories of design, process, fabrication and level, which were
introduced after analyzing selected praxis-based literature. From the prototype evaluation, the following criteria were noted for improvement:
fabrication-informed design, construction process, material-informed process, assembly, connection, detail, and machine control. The
evaluation-based discussion presented the direction for the continuing further research regarding how to approach and improve design and
fabrication methods in building facade prototyping implementation by FGF. |