Designing inside a point cloud

The topic of our studio for the past two semesters has been the reuse of cultural heritage. Our students were asked to work on the transformation of a mansion from the 16th century and an abandoned sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. First, they had to identify areas of architectural interest. Then, a concept had to be proposed by each group to integrate a new program inside the existing building. The second half of each semester was entirely dedicated to the development of constructive details. As remote teaching prevented the realization of any physical prototype in our workshop, other strategies had to be investigated to integrate fabrication and assembly constraints into the design process. Taking advantage of the tools and experience accumulated in our academic research, laser scanning techniques, point cloud processing, and parametric design were introduced to our students. Those digital tools provided new ways of approaching design and understanding the existing spaces of the buildings which were being studied. Although virtual simulations did not completely fill the void created by the lack of physical experiences, they brought support to discuss questions related to the constructive reality of architecture.