DIGITAL TOOLS AND ROBOTICS IN ARCHITECTURE: ENVISIONING THE FUTURE INEDUCATION AND PRACTICE

In a world advancing at a vertiginous speed, technology is directly affecting almost every single aspect of contemporary human life. It is therefore crucial nowadays for both the professional and the educational sectors to constantly update themselves with the latest trends in their fields. Once students graduate, they should first be familiar with the needs of the highly competitive market, and at the same time to be prepared for challenges facing the practice in order to improve it and stand at a higher level from competitors. For such reason, students need to be aware that high tech tools are vital in defining the way professionals work and advance. In this sense, the educational field shall play a leading role to conscious students about such line of work that is contaminating all professional areas, including architecture. This paper therefore will focus on the ideas of how to deal with the latest trends in digital tools and robotics at the academic level in order to awake and motivate architectural students to rationally use them as a helping set of tools that will have a direct impact on the way they work. Exploration at the level of freedom that such means can offer to enhance students at the creativity level will be directly analyzed throughout a workshop conducted, based on digital tools and robotics in architecture, and linked to the intentions related to architectural design challenges by involving students in site visits to projects where cutting edge work is being applied such as the Sagrada Família, one of Antoni Gaudí’s masterpieces. Conclusions will be based on the principles helping students dealing with advanced tools to transform their intentions from digital to analogue means as part of a controlled system intended to innovate design and construction principles