Brad Bell will introduce the Digital Fabrication Alliance to the audience at the McGraw Hill Auditorium in New York, NY at the Architect’s Newspaper Metals in Construction Facades Conference.

Andrew Vrana will moderate a roundtable discussion:

Facade Innovation:  Performance, Optimization and Integration

The ability of computational technology to inform facade design from novel geometries and enhanced environmental performance to rationalized component optimization and digital fabrication is creating new possibilities in the development of intelligent building skins.  The confluence of visible forces (structural, functional and physical) and invisible forces (cultural, political and temporal) can now be measured, managed and realized through the integration of enhanced information processing, cross-disciplinary material organization and computer assisted manufacturing ingenuity.  From a broad spectrum of expertise representing the professional, academic, applied research and engineering consultation community, the speakers participating in this discussion present a series of façade design case studies that articulate these forces of innovation in practice and lead the speculative dialogue on where this trend will head in the future.

Performative facade systems
Anna Dyson, CASE
Case Study:  Helioptix

Optimization of facade systems
Erik Verboon, Buro Happold
Case Study:  King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture

Integration of facade systems
Phillip Anzalone, Columbia University GSAPP
Case Study:  Columbia University Building Intelligence Project