We just returned from an amazing week at motoco in Mulhouse, France, where we joined Prof. Mischa Schaub and 23 students from HyperWerk Institute for Postindustrial Design in Basel. We traveled to Basel/Mulhouse to conduct a design and digital fabrication workshop, which takes students from zero to full scale prototypes in five days. The week was devoted to designing and constructing a series of deployable plywood furniture and casework prototypes for working, dining, and lounging at HyperWerk’s new space in Basel.

Working in the classroom and wood shop at motoco, students collaborated on design responses to the project brief, and developed and refined their designs for fabrication. Collectively, we worked though a fabrication workflow and digital techniques using a variety of softwares to design, develop cut files, and produce GCode. We experimented with SketchUp and the SketchU CAM plug-in as well as combinations of Rhino and Inventor. For HyperWerk and motoco, this is just the beginning. The motoco wood shop will soon add more routers and a large format laser cutter to its space. And, now HyperWerk has a critical mass of students with the knowledge, ingenuity, and creativity to put these powerful machines to work.