CCA Digital Craft Lab

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CCA Digital Craft Lab

The CCA Digital Craft Lab supports and promotes advanced research in digital design, fabrication, material science and robotics.

09/02/2026

This Fall, DCL Co-Director Prof. Negar Kalantar Negar Kalantar is leading Bamboo Tectonics, an Advanced Digital Craft Studio at CCA exploring Computation + Bamboo + Transformation.

Developed in collaboration with Bamboo U Bamboo U , Bali, the studio builds on the 2025 Bamboo Tectonics course and Kalantar’s recent research across Japan and Bali—from her work at Kyushu University on bamboo’s fibrous morphologies through digital fabrication to her investigations and teaching at Bamboo U focused on transformable bamboo structures.

Students will explore bamboo as both a material and a computational system—working through material behavior, digital design, fabrication, craft, and deployable structures to rethink how architecture can become adaptive, transformable, and non-static.

DigitalFabrication TransformableArchitecture BambooU CCAArchitecture

05/20/2026

Beautiful work produced in Alex Schofield’s MArch Design Media 2 course this spring! From .scho Alex: “This course, Design Media 2, has historically been the “digital fabrication” class (to oversimplify things), however my focus this semester has been to teach not just the how - but the why. The larger conversation of the class follows “THE (RISKY) CRAFT OF DIGITAL MAKING” (2009) (see attached), which is an update to David Pye’s “The Nature and Art of Workmanship” (1968) in light of computation. We will be using a lens of craft - whatever this means to you - to assess the work, their acts of making, and discovery.”

04/30/2026

Experimenting with new ways to build the world! - CCA Digital Craft Lab - Final Reviews
Saturday, May 2, 2026, 1:30-4:30 PM
CCA Nave Presentation Space
145 Hooper Street, San Francisco, CA

The Robotic Timber Pavilions (RTP) studio reframes how non-standard timber structures are conceived and assembled, extending additive digital fabrication into full-scale architectural production. In this context, arches and shell systems operate as primary testbeds, capitalizing on their geometric clarity and structural efficiency to advance robotic assembly strategies.

Using robotic platforms that grip, orient, and accurately place components according to precise digital models, RTP fuses computational design with semi-autonomous construction workflows, where human collaborators play an essential role in gluing, stapling, and completing the final assembly. The result is a parametric family of expressive forms that align spatial and aesthetic ambitions with structural performance, optimizing material through locally differentiated aggregation. Shifting away from the making of discrete parts, RTP emphasizes the spatial orchestration of generic timber elements (Off-the-shelf 2”x2”x1’ SPF lumber), where curvature, continuity, and surface behavior drive new directions in automated timber construction.

This studio, led by Digital Craft Lab co-founder Prof. Jason Kelly Johnson showcases a series of experimental projects developed with California College of the Arts architecture students. The studio was supported by robotics expert Tyson Phillips and structural engineer Felix Weber (RDH Building Science).

The presentations, focused around two full scale timber installations, will be followed by a discussion.

04/23/2026

Exciting robotic assembly work emerging in the Computational Timber advanced architecture studio taught by Professor Jason Kelly Johnson at the CCA Digital Craft Lab. In collaboration with the amazing the students are exploring parametric design to fabrication protocols, robotic assembly of timber and biomaterial elements, and disassembly and reuse. The studio is also supported by structural engineer Felix Weber.

03/04/2026

Today (3/4) at CCa San Francisco
145 Hooper St
3-7pm Nave Presentation Space
4 Amazing speakers: CCA Digital Craft Lab favorite .gannon plus

Making Now and Next: Creative Practice and Worlds to Come

AFTER INTELLIGENCE: A public inquiry into the impacts of artificial intelligence and automation on cultural production, civic life, and the human imagination, and our role in shaping what comes next.

Dr. Madeline Gannon .gannon is a multidisciplinary designer and researcher inventing better ways to communicate with machines. Also known as the “Robot Whisperer”, she specializes in convincing robots to do things they were never intended to do. Her work blends techniques in art, design, computer science, and robotics to forge new futures for human-robot relations. Dr. Gannon is a Knight Foundation Awardee, a World Economic Forum Cultural Leader, and a former Robotics & AI Researcher at NVIDIA. She has held previous fellowships at ETH Zurich, Autodesk Pier 9, and the Carnegie Mellon STUDIO for Creative Inquiry. She is known as one of the ‘Top 10 Women in Robotics Industry’ and ‘World’s 50 Most Renowned Women in Robotics’ according to Analytics Insight. Gannon holds a Masters of Architecture from Florida International University and a Ph.D in Computational Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Huge thank you to the organizers. After Intelligence is a collaborative initiative led by CCA Deans including

12/12/2025

Intro to Creative Robotics final exhibition! Digital Craft Lab seminar taught by Jason Kelly Johnson with amazing guests Tyson Philips , Great work by the students using our pen plotters, our X-Carve by and paintings with our Agilus!

12/08/2025

The Digital Craft Lab wrapped up an unforgettable Final Review for the Advanced Studio: Bamboo Tectonics led by Instructor: Negar Kalantar, PhD, with Structural Design Advisor: Felix Weber.
Students who presented their amazing work:
Andrew Han Bae • Ben Ruan • Berk Kip • Canyon Allan • Jongmin Jeon .22 • Ray Shao • Rocio Urbano .ive • Zahabiya Sakarwala • Zi Ching Ooi

Across the day, students presented three ambitious project series—shell structures, reciprocal systems, and tensegrities—each pushing the boundaries of how computation and natural materials can inform one another. Working at full scale with bamboo encouraged students to negotiate form, force, and fabrication directly, revealing the remarkable intelligence of this material.

Fourteen generous reviewers and guests joined us and transformed the review into a rich conversation on structure, design, and the future of material experimentation:
Alex Schofield • Andrei Hakhovich • Ashley Greenwald • Felix Weber • Isabella Van der Griend • Jason Kelly Johnson • Korbin Keech • Mark Donohue • Nataly Gattegno • Nick Cote • Thom Faulder • Kwamina Money, Keith Krumwiede

The lab continues to explore how computational design can meet the intelligence of nature—and bamboo proved once again to be an extraordinary collaborator. Its strength, flexibility, and unpredictability invite forms of creativity that no digital model can fully anticipate. This dialogue between algorithm and material remains central to the lab’s research and will continue into the semesters ahead.

More to come as we keep pushing the frontiers of bamboo tectonics. .architecture

11/04/2025

Creative Robotics mid-review! Digital Craft Lab seminar taught by Jason Kelly Johnson with amazing guest Tyson Philips Great work by the students using our pen plotters, our X-Carve by and light drawings with our Agilus!

11/03/2025

CCA History Theory Experiments (HTX) and Digital Craft Lab (DCL) invite you to a lunchtime talk:

RICK RUNDELL
PERSPECTIVES ON TECHNOLOGY AND ARCHITECTURE

Tuesday, Nov 4, 12:15–1:30 pm
CCA, Timken Lecture Hall

Rick Rundell’s career spans the first Cray supercomputers and early CAD workstations, the introduction of mainstream CAD in architectural practice, the launch of Revit and the development of BIM, and leading a world-class research facility and program for digitally-driven fabrication in the building industry. A registered and formerly practicing architect, Rick offers insights bridging theory and practice from his own experience and provocations on the impact of technology on design and the practice of architecture.

Discussion led by Chris Long, Siow Fang Tan, and Vicky Cheung

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Website

http://digitalcraft.cca.edu/

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