Materials Lab

NSAD’s materials lab is the place on campus where ideas come to life. Whether it’s working with wood, metal, or plastic, the Materials Lab has the tools to allow students to produce their visions.

Materials Lab director Erik Luhtala says, “A good program requires both a profound library and profound shop for students to fabricate their ideas. The shop is sometimes a place where their thoughts are prototyped and tested—and where they sometimes fail. That’s because it’s a pedagogical tool for the students.

How do the students create these tangible representations of their fledgling ideas? By using the three types of fabrication utilities offered in the lab.

First is a woodworking facility. Among the many tools it offers students are table saws, panel saws, miter saws, radial arm saws, drill presses, band saws, multiple types of sanders, a large planer and jointer, and a full array of both power and manual hand tools.

Second is a metal shop, which provides for everything from welding to precision sheet metal fabrication and plasma cutting—everything that metalworking requires.

And third, there is a digital facility, which is still expanding but currently houses two industrial CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) machines, one of which is a laser and the other a router, both with 4' x 8' processing areas that provide students with the opportunity to process larger sheets of material while mandating highly intricate output. The shop also operates three smaller-format Universal Laser Systems for more intricate work and a digital light processing photopolymer 3D printer for the fabrication of highly complex geometries.

Examples of the projects that students might produce in the shop include:

• Making representations of their designs.
• Fabricating a steel truss to see if it actually works the way it was projected to.
• Using a 3D printer to prototype a functional plastic product design, such as a new iPhone design.
• Building real, functional furniture that was focused on during the furniture design curriculum.

NSAD also teaches an in-shop class, Digital Fabrication. This course explores how to and, more importantly, why to use the digital fabrication tools in architecture and design projects.

Some of the most interesting things produced in the shop include:

• A thesis project by a former student who is now the shop’s assistant manager. “It was called ‘Flex’ and it talked about flexible kinematic structures that required a lot of understanding of movable arms and joints and paneling, and he was required to fabricate a lot of it,” Luhtala says. Through his research process, he bolstered the staff’s understanding of the metal side of the shop.
• Several wood-based items, including furniture that showed extremely high-end wood working. There also have been iPad cases built out of solid Zebrano wood.
• The PeriScope Project, for which several faculty members and a handful of students worked together to adaptively re-use 5 oceanic cargo containers. The materials for the project were pre-fabricated in the shop and then assembled using tools from the shop on undeveloped parcels of land in downtown San Diego. Currently, the former containers are being used as low cost studio space for emerging artists and designers.

Be sure to get more information about current work being done at the NSAD Materials Lab, processes being used, staff, and more.