Caliza, interaction and collaboration between technic and technology

Faced with the dramatic decrease in the material contribution of local manufacturing of countries like Chile, it is urgent that designers propose methods and tools that allow technique and technology dialogue and interact in a collaborative way to its revival. Today it is possible to identify two entities that exist independently and act in isolation. On the one hand and in decay, traditional crafts techniques that have been commissioned to build the material identity of the territory, and in a opposite position the growing installation of hundreds Digital Fabrication services offering the use of fast, accurate and efficient automated tools. Thus, the question arises: it is possible to break this duality and they both attend, enhancing their qualities?.
“Caliza” is the result of a method of interaction between technique and technology, that takes the higher qualities of both worlds apparently divergent and merge into a single production flow. On the one hand, the digital variability through the Code and the Computer Numerical Control, and on the other hand, analog variability, trough human hand and stroke.
Taking as a study case the heritage of native wood lamination craftsmanship, irregular molds are parametrized and machined from 3D operations with a CNC Router, which are used to laminate in traditional ways with Chilean woods. Thanks to the precision, speed and profitability of Digital Fabrication tools, is possible to experience and acquire complex shapes reminiscent of carving molds, method that has been left undone because of the high costos involved and the manual skills require to perform them.
Thus, “Caliza”, is product of technological development for this technique, which from sheets acting as texture and structure, opens potencial applications of new forms and functions for the reintegration and revaluation of our local material identity.