Design and fabrication methods build upon previous research on lightweight fiber structures conducted at the University of Stuttgart and expand it towards inhabitable, multi-story building systems. Interdisciplinary design collaboration based on reciprocal computational feedback allows for the concurrent consideration of architectural, structural, fabrication and material constraints. The robotic coreless filament winding process only uses minimal, modular formwork and allows for the efficient production of morphologically differentiated building components.

The research results were demonstrated through Maison Fibre, developed for the 17th Architecture Biennale in Venice. Situated at the Venice Arsenale, the installation is composed of 30 plate like elements and depicts a modular, further extensible scheme. While this first implementation of a hybrid multi-story building system relies on established glass and carbon fiber composites, the methods can be extended towards a wider range of materials ranging from ultra-high-performance mineral fiber systems to renewable natural fibers.

Improving access to digital design knowledge—specifically methods and processes—could help address this concern. In scientific publications outside of architecture, the methodology section and technical appendices are critical to verification and advancement of the field. If an experiment cannot be duplicated, the validity of the result is called into question. The same standard does not seem to apply in computational design and digital fabrication, as the descriptions of projects are seldom detailed, transparent, or instructive enough to permit replication.

This paper argues that critical computation integrates two strands of theory and practice in a seamless way. The theory originates from the tradition of critical theory, and reveals the underlying algorithmic biases behind pervasive technologies such as the scholarly work of Ruha Benjamin, Slavoj Zizek and Yuval Harari. The practice uses the technology itself in a critical approach as way to reflect our privacy or as a strategy to undermine various forms of power structure and to promote forms of resistance such as creative works of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Laruen Lee McCarthy and my own practice.

This paper first provides a brief theoretical context to the notion of critical computation. Then by differentiating between technological determinism and intersectional affordance, it aims to provide a lens through which to study surveillance computation. This paper attempts to avoid any form of technological determinism. Rather than rehashing arguments as to whether computation and in particular surveillance is inherently good or bad, it aims to take an “intersectional feminist affordance” approach to show what constitutes the gaze and surveillance, and to consider what strategies of resistance might prove to be effective in art and design practices.