The AA|FAB Research Cluster announces an open call for submissions to the Designing Fabrication Awards. The Cluster is interested in recently built projects identifying the most innovative integration of design and fabrication processes through digitally driven design systems and protocols that contribute to an international discourse on the emerging technologies. We are interested in work that exemplifies how the designer is increasingly approaching the material fabrication and assembly of projects as an integral part of the design process and how the acquisition of these new forms of knowledge is changing the existing definitions of the profession.

Projects must have been fabricated to at least full scale working prototypes within the last three years and explore the use of contemporary fabrication technologies and computational or systematic design techniques as a means of producing design innovation. It must be exemplary of the deployment of new technologies and its impact in the design and construction process which rethinks the traditional role of the architect.

As the application of digitally driven manufacturing technologies is not evenly distributed across the various design disciplines, industries and geographic locations, the competition will be organised in three categories, or generic sites, in order to expose these disciplinary differences, yet provide a common curatorial framework.

1. ROOM Projects in this category are sited within an interior space and include furniture, room installations or interior fit-outs. Themes that may be addressed include, but are not limited to, new furnishing typologies or conditions of occupation; explorations of the qualities of space defining surfaces or superficial effects; or the responsive control of ambient environmental qualities.

2. BUILDING How far are buildings and spaces defined by the design of their envelopes? Projects in this category will examine the issue of the external envelope and/or enclosure of space as a differentiated or dynamic response to specific contextual conditions. Themes that are explored might include, but are not limited to, the external envelope's ability to communicate information; control transparency; regulate energy or environmental exchange; or mediate user interaction between inside and outside.

3. CITY Projects in this category will intervene within the city in a highly localised and specific way and yet have the capacity to influence the larger quality of external public spaces. Themes that are explored might include, but are not limited to, specific infrastructural interventions; infrastructural systems that facilitate activity, exchange or circulation; one off pieces that contribute to civic amenity; or enhance the ambient quality of the public realm.