RE/FAB: Photogrammetric Fabrication

In most modern buildings, developers lower costs by eschewing the beautiful architectural detailing of our recent past. Novel fabrication tools like 3D printers and CNC machines are our best hope to economically reintegrate such intimate ornamentation.

In 2016, my colleague and I started a business doing just that. We won residencies at the prestigious New York MakerSpace with our proposal to use photogrammetric software and their digital fabrication shop to reduce the time and cost of recreating and restoring historic architectural detailing. To prove our concept, we reproduced an architectural sculpture from the Brooklyn Museum at one-quarter scale using only an iPhone 6, a 3D printer, and silicon molds. I wish to develop this process for larger projects in the future.