
As we designed the digitally fabricated Farnsworth House superstructure of A Mies for All, we wanted to test and evaluate the concept of manufacturing and construction assembly. Since building a full scale house to validate the structural concept was out of the question, we planned out a scale prototype made of 2.5mm plywood and cut with a 1/32” diameter endmill on our ShopBot desktop CNC router.
In contrast to the architectural models that we usually build to represent and communicate a building, this model is not a model, but rather, a scale simulation of the actual building. It’s a seemingly minor distinction that changes everything. Each toolpath deployed to mill parts for this 1:10 prototype can be applied to ¾” plywood and a ¼” endmill on a standard 4’x8’ CNC router, to produce a full scale house.

