Book Launch: Homing the Machine in Architecture

The Critical Software Lab is excited to celebrate the publication of a new book called “Homing the Machine in Architecture.” This edited collection is a series of conversations on the ways designers, practitioners, historians, and theorists orient themselves within the world of architectural digital fabrication. The lecture will feature a brief overview of the book and a discussion with editors Zach Cohen and Galo Canizares.

To “home” a digital fabrication machine is to send it back to its origin point—a point that can be specified by the fabricator in advance of the fabrication process or by the defaults that are pre-programmed into the machine. The homing process is necessary and productive since it determines the physical point at which the machine (and the maker) begin making—every time that architectural designers begin to digitally fabricate something new, they first need to home the machine. This book gathers first- and second-hand accounts of the origins of individual “digi-fab” practices from the emergence of advanced prototyping tools to the contemporary moment. It features interviews, essays, and case studies organized around three questions: What are the possible histories of digital fabrication in architecture? How do designers orient themselves in this emergent discipline? What conceptual original points do architectural designers return to when they home their machines?

Zach Cohen, Cooper Union

Zach Cohen is an architect, researcher, and educator. His research and teaching examine the ways in which architects can use digital fabrication technologies to reimagine both the immaterial and physical labor of architectural design. From 2019 to 2021, Zach was the Christos Yessios Visiting Assistant Professor at the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University. Prior to his time at Knowlton, he was a Research Lead at the Self-Assembly Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zach is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at The Cooper Union, where he teaches courses centered on what he calls “theoretical digital fabrication.” He is also the co-founder and partner of the Brooklyn-based architectural design practice, commoncraft, which presently has a variety of commercial and residential construction projects in and around New York City. Zach is a registered architect in the State of New York.

Galo Canizares, University of Kentucky

Galo Canizares is a designer, writer, and educator. His work blends absurdity, computation, world-making, simulation, and parafiction to address issues in technology and the built environment. He is currently researching the sociotechnical networks of relations between design’s softwarization and the architectural imagination. Galo was the recipient of the 2016-17 LeFevre ’29 Emerging Practitioner Fellowship, and in 2018 was awarded the Christos Yessios Visiting Professorship at The Ohio State University. His writings have been published in various journals and he is the author of Digital Fabrications: Designer Stories for a Software-Based Planet, a collection of essays on software and design published by Applied Research & Design. His collaborative architectural practice, office ca, won the 2018 Ragdale Ring competition. He is currently assistant professor of architecture at the University of Kentucky College of Design where he directs the Critical Software Lab.