Studio 1: Digital Craft – Bridging Computation, Making, and Form
Digital technologies are transforming the ways architects imagine, develop, and materialize design. Moving beyond their role as technical and representational tools, digital methods increasingly shape how architectural ideas are conceived, tested, fabricated, and constructed. In Studio 1 we ask: How can computational design support new forms of digital craft in architecture? The studio explores the practice of digital craft as a bridge between the digital and physical world, mediating materials, techniques, and architectural form. We will investigate how computational thinking, AI, generative processes, and digital fabrication can support new approaches to design exploration and production. Translating digital information into physical artifacts, we will examine how design decisions are shaped through iterative processes of prototyping, digital fabrication, assembly, and material experimentation.
Context of Investigation
This studio will work in the context of Holmsund, near the port where industry, water, and landscape intersect. Through a semester-long design project, students will engage with this dynamic setting, exploring how architecture can respond to the relationships between industry, infrastructure, public life, and the waterfront.
Industrial landscapes are often highly monofunctional, making them vulnerable to changing needs. By introducing greater diversity while working with the existing, these areas can transform gradually over time. The studio will use digital methods to explore and speculate on alternative ways of activating the waterfront for public use and opening it towards multiple possible futures.
Studio Agenda and Methodology
The studio will approach digital fabrication as a contemporary form of craft, positioning digital making as an integral part of architectural thinking. Students will engage with design across digital and physical media, exploring how computational workflows and fabrication techniques can inform architectural form, material expression, and construction. The studio encourages an understanding of digital tools as means of production, exploring how they can support the development of precise, inventive, and situated architectural proposals.
Adopting a project-based approach, the studio will engage directly with the design process from the outset. Through drawing, modeling, scripting, visualization, prototyping, and fabrication, students will develop a digital craft that combines technical competence with creative inquiry. The studio encourages experimentation across media and methods, fostering a reflective design practice grounded in the exploration, materialization, and production of architecture.
Teaching team: Elena Vazquez (studio responsible), Emelie Aktanius.
Latest update: 2026-08-30