Digital Turn was an exhibition series exploring digital innovations in the built environment. It acted as a physical and metaphorical exhibition platform, demonstrating how digital tools are changing ways of thinking about and producing our built environment.

Prelude: Semblr (18 May - 9 June 2018)
Semblr explores automated construction technologies for the built environment. It suggests a predominantly recyclable material system of engineered timber and steel bricks, designed using data-driven generative algorithms, and robotically assembled without human labour.

Photo by Sue Barr.

First turn: Design Computation Lab (20 June - 13 July 2018)
Design Computation Lab (DCL), a research laboratory that develops novel design methods for the utilisation of computational technologies in architectural design, fabrication and assembly. Based at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, the lab’s work is framed around the notion that we need to rethink the basic building blocks of architecture. It embodies a fundamental shift, one that demonstrates that a discrete and wholly digital architecture and design thinking can close gaps between how we design, fabricate and assemble buildings.

Photo by Chris Jackson.

Second turn: Zaha Hadid Architects Computation and Design Research Group (ZHCODE) (25 July - 10 November 2018)
ZHCODE is the computation and design research group for Zaha Hadid Architects. Set up by Nils Fischer, Shajay Bhooshan and Patrik Schumacher in 2007, CODE forefronts architectural experimentation by putting into practice knowledge in programming, geometry and mathematics to find physically and economically feasible solutions to architectural problems.

Third turn: Architectural Association Design Research Laboratory (AADRL) (24 November 2018 - 26 January 2019)
Architectural Association Design Research Lab (AADRL) shared their most recent work, practices and research agendas along with those of their graduates, to show how innovative digital design and research tools in educational and experimental establishments are put into practice, changing the conventions of design and fabrication.

Mario Carpo, Professor of Architectural History and Theory at University College London, uses the term Digital Turn in works such as 'The Digital Turn in Architecture, 1992-2012' (2012) and 'The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence' (2017)

Videos by Chris Jackson.

Exhibition design by Install Archive.

Graphic Design by Daly & Lyon.