The Digital Design and Production Lab is a department set up in 2014 within the institute of architecture, exploring the manifold possibilities of methods and tools in the field of digital design and production.

The lab shifted from a classical wood-workshop to a research facility within the domain of digital fabrication and representation. Besides courses which enable students to operate prototyping machinery, the DDPLab explores the reciprocal relationships among design, science, and industry.

As the design and fabrication tools extended the ability to operate on non-standard forms, the protocols to constitute design changed accordingly. Media like plans and sections are extended by computer generated imagery and animation, real time environments, database models (BIM), scripted parametric definitions, data sets controlling fabrication-machines, physical simulations etc.. These specific non uniform representations of one and the same artifact root in a core data set – the 3D model – which is conceptualized, modeled and maintained by the architects.

The ability to formalize procedures within the production of prototypes enable the students to design and organize building components accordingly within a larger scale.

The DDPLab is closely linked to the three design studios as well as to the postgraduate program, reflecting their needs by providing proven tools and exploring and introducing new technologies to inflect into design practice.

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The DDPLab…

…explores the reciprocal relationships among design, science, and technology across scales.

…covers a range of topics e.g. fabrication, computation, architecture as well as material ecology, interaction and visualization.

…examines how transformations in science and technology influence design thinking and vice versa.

…is run by Armin Hess, Daniela Kröhnert and Daniel Prost.