As we rely on new tools in the production of architecture, the advantages of digital design are many, but the challenge lies in maintaining high levels of craft while embracing collaborative working environments and highly technical building systems. This studio introduced students to high-precision documentation and fabrication through a case study of Louis Sullivan’s Wainwright Building in St. Louis.

Students were tasked with advanced modeling and translating digital documents into molds for replicating historic facade components. The digital tools enabled the creation of surfaces that exceeded the precision of the original terracotta tiles, requiring additional skill from the modelers to resolve complex geometries and successfully prototype them.

Because no drawings or surveys of the Sullivan precedent and its many historical details existed, students began with photographs of the Wainwright Building. Digital models were built directly from elevation photographs of the building’s details. Sketching once again proved to be a vital instrument in architecture, regardless of the technologies that follow it, helping students analyze, uncover, and comprehend the organization of complex patterns.

Sullivan’s design process was effectively reversed, with the organic geometry delaminated to uncover the underlying framework from which the varied floral elements were constructed. This process established the hierarchy of lines within each detail, which students extracted and used to produce 3D surfaces. That hierarchy then informed a cascade of subsequent surfaces, much as it had informed Sullivan’s original design process.

Students were challenged to recognize the “maker’s marks” of computer software and fabrication tools and to gain control over the expressive patterns produced by these industry-standard technologies.