Costruire additivo e digitale: il futuro dell′architettura e dell′ingegneria | Additive and Digital Building: the Future of Architecture and Engineering?

In recent years, digitally-assisted construction has attracted research from universities, public and private institutions and multinational companies. After revolutionising the world of design, computerisation is preparing to transform, in a radical way, the construction site itself. This is not an entirely new phenomenon: it has its roots in the process of mechanisation and automation of construction sites that affected Western Europe and the most technologically advanced countries in the second half of the 20th century. It is now nourished by the contribution of digitalisation spreading across all industrial sectors and, slowly, in the construction sector. Numerical control machines – milling machines, drilling machines, lathes, and laser cutting equipment, successfully introduced in workshops – can now be considered consolidated in the production of building components. Therefore, considerable curiosity is today aroused by three-dimensional additive printing techniques and those connected with using robots on construction sites. If file-to-factory processes are a reality, is the time ripe for file-to-construction?