The language, creation and even imagination of architecture and design today are increasingly influenced by digital technologies. Whether we speak about the numerous tools of artificial intelligence or the advancing fabrication mechanisms, these innovations percolate into various levels in creative practices—easing, rethinking or redefining their contemporary semantics. In the space of hybridity where present-day design and architecture thrive, digital fabrication and its umpteen mediums, emerge as creative appendages, adroit in their distinctive non-human ways. 3D printing techniques change the face of manufacturing and making, parametric design breathes life into fluid forms previously deemed unattainable and AI morphs calculated prompts into dynamic realities.

The symbiosis between the intrinsically human—human-made and human-oriented—spheres of architecture and design and the complex binaries of digital tools delineates the world unravelling around us. What will this language evolve into next? What are its promises, dreams and prospects? Retracing the Best of 2024, STIR enlists projects that harness digital tools and technologies to pave the way for innovation in design and architecture.

1. 3D-Printed Earth Forest Campus by IAAC

Amidst the growing threat of climate change looming over the world and the global predictions annunciating warnings of a housing crisis, what can—or must—the (near) future of architecture look like? Ditching the clamour of hammers, drills and heavy duty vehicles, The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) presented a sustainable and versatile affordable housing solution which is 3D-printed. Their project, 3D-Printed Earth Forest Campus is a sustainable dwelling that can be constructed, quickly and easily, anywhere in the world. IAAC’s adaptable building prototype 3D-printed using local mud in Barcelona utilised the Crane WASP 3D printer.

2. Synthetic Memories by Domestic Data Streamers

“Memories are the architects of our identity and visual memories shape our sense of self, our sense of belonging to a specific place,” says Pau Garcia, CEO & founding partner of Domestic Data Streamers. Synthetic Memories, an intriguing project by the Barcelona-based studio working in information technology research, is 'an initiative that aims to recover lost or undocumented visual memories using AI image generation’. Beginning in 2022 as an effort to humanise digital technology, the project collaborates with people to (re)create images of their memories that are not photographed or they want to preserve. Synthetic Memories has travelled to several countries to revive fading personal stories, also claiming to attenuate the effects of memory loss.

3. Canoa - a digital design tool

Founded by Federico Negro as a response to the design community’s failure to address environmental issues and its wasteful practices, Canoa is a collaborative digital design tool and ‘AI co-pilot’ for interior designers. The AI-assisted, collaborative digital tool allows designers to share mood boards, layouts, product schedules and more with their teams and clients, inviting their creative inputs. At the 2024 edition of The International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF), Canoa presented a community-centric experience at The Lookbook Lounge. The team also hosted VESSEL, a group exhibition of 28 independent makers, during the San Francisco Design Week 2024. Both these showcases celebrated the collaborative ethos of the tool, emphasising the potential of people coming together to design collaborative terrains.

4. Protobox and digital artisanship

Protobox, a São Paulo-based experimental studio established by architects and professors Renata La Rocca and Wilson Barbosa Neto, pursues the smartest possible architectural solutions. The architects do so by employing progressive technologies in the design process. In 2024, the design duo adorned the lobby of an office building in São Paulo with a serpentine parametric design. The striking organic bench is the biggest object the architects conceived entirely digitally—from design to fabrication. “We controlled the whole process, from beginning to end; our client called us digital artisans,” La Rocca told STIR.

5. Dung Dkar Cloak by EJTECH

Textile, music and record-keeping have been closely linked through years and cultures—from knitting songs written to lift spirits during the World Wars to fibres used as record-keeping devices in Indigenous cultures such as in South America. What if one could listen to the melodies visually woven into textiles? Hungary-based artist duo EJTECH combined digital jacquard weaving, sound synthesis, fractal geometry and algorithmic thinking in their multidisciplinary research project Dung Dkar Cloak. Bridging the haptic and the auditory, the project creates a multisensory experience through augmented textile technology.

6. New Delft Blue by Studio RAP

3D clay printing, computational design, robotic digital production and artisanal glazing fuse together in Rotterdam-based RAP Studio undertaking, New Deft Blue. The diverse professionals—architects, roboticists, programmers, designers and researchers—put together the best of innovations in digital fabrication in their vibrant urban intervention. Two large archways clad in blue 3D-printed ceramic tiles transport people into the PoortMeesters residential-building and this courtyard setting. The composition of varying yet cohesive digitally produced tiles links the semi-public courtyard to the larger urban context.

7. Abyssicide by Sruli Recht x Roland Snooks

Climate crisis, albeit a dire phenomenon with irreparable damages, is a conversation often met with inaction and dismissal. Sruli Recht, an artist and designer based in Reykjavík, Iceland, and Roland Snooks, director, RMIT Architecture Tectonic Formation Lab, focus the spotlight on the crisis, no more a distant reality, in their site-specific art installation ABYSSICIDE. Three humanoid sculptures grown from water through a biomimetic technique drawing from corals are achieved through computational design and robotic fabrication. ABYSSICIDE envisions a post-climate-collapse scenario where people sacrifice themselves to the rising oceans.

8. Polyphytes by Nicole Hone

Her knack for natural and technological systems and innovations ushers Nicole Hone, an industrial designer and graphic designer based in Wellington, New Zealand to craft Polyphytes, a set of objects that embody the dynamic qualities of 4D printing and evoke vascular systems in plants. The 3D-printed entities result from a new feature of PolyJet printing known as Liquid Print. “The primary intention was to show how these analogue physical objects can create a powerful visual display without the need of lengthy digital manipulation, in fact, their analogue ‘randomness’ exceeds the digital creation potential in intricate detail,” reads a description shared by the designer.

9. Lunar Habitat by Hassell

The undying fascination with outer space has piqued the interest of many, including several renowned architects envisioning models for lunar bases and settlements. Opting for 3D printing as a sustainable and cost-effective alternative for building on the moon, international design practice Hassell proposed a modular settlement near the edge of the Shackleton Crater on Earth’s satellite. “We cannot possibly predict now how a lunar community will evolve in the next couple of decades. We, therefore designed a masterplan that is adaptable to change and can accommodate various types of lunar settlements in the future,” remarked Xavier De Kestelier, Global Head of Design at Hassell.

STIRred 2024 wraps up the year with curated compilations of our expansive art, architecture and design coverage at STIR this year. Did your favourites make the list? Tell us in the comments!