Industrialization has led to significant transformation in production cultures, radically eliminating craft paradigms in the development of objects. In the digital age, however, we are now experiencing a return of those craft paradigms to production cultures, as computer-aided design and fabrication processes not only incrementally dissolve the separation of design and execution, making design processes between humans and machines more interactive, but at the same time open up the possibility of developing variable and individualized products. And this is emerging in forms that were previously out of the ordinary.

The goals of this design research are accordingly not only to investigate the understanding of craft paradigms in the digital present, and thus how it can be found in current digital design and manufacturing processes, but at the same time what new expressions it can take on. A central goal is to explore the meaning and potential of processuality, using the example of variation through deviation within new digital design and manufacturing processes, and to develop an approach to negotiate these central questions using the example of the development of a robotic 3D-printed chair made of porcelain.