Once, as "master builders" architect both designed and built structures. However, architects relinquished their direct role in the building process centuries ago and have instead relied on 2-D drawings to describe their visions to specialised builders. Today this communication process is rapidly changing as a direct result of digital fabrication introduced in 1971 by technology developed at the French automotive company, Renault*. Drawings are being augmented - if not entirely replaced - by process that permit 3-D fabrication of complex forms directly from Architects' data.
*(Paul Bezier, "Mathematical and Practical Possibilities of UNISURF". Computer Aided Geometric Design, 1974, 127-52)
Digital direct communication has reinvigorated the concept of master builder for a few architects. Repopularized some thirty years ago the design-build method means the responsibility for design and production are provided by the same party. Pedagogically significant since it opens up a fertile dialectic between design and tectonics, there is again tremendous interest in this model in academia. Many schools have adopted design-build in their curriculum, often relying on digital fabrication for components in such things as material research, formal investigation, and community-based initiatives. The upshot of this is that more emerging practitioners are once again enthusiastic about possibilities inherent in varying levels of participation in the actual making of design. Design-build today has two distinctly different branches - the decidedly larger one (dominated by contractors) deals preliminary with profit optimisation, while the smaller (but more interesting tectonically)) deals with product optimisation. A few architectural firms have thrown themselves into the opportunities presented by this latter area by exploring the union of 3-D design with 3-D fabrication, creating works that range from sculptural objects and surfaces to full-sized buildings. Further reason that architects should pay more attention to this area is that at the current rate of change in the building industry , design-build project delivery is expected to surpass traditional design-bid-build methods by 2014. For architects with the courage to branch out from their well-entrenched methodologies, tremendous opportunities for increased complexity, control, and economies of scale through digital fabrication lie ahead. Such endeavour permit industrious architects to focus design efforts and materials exploration on specific areas of architectural significance (regardless of scale) and thus reassert themselves as master builders!