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Whilst robots are predictable, repetitive, predefined and constant, natural materials present unpredictable complexity. Over the past few centuries, materials have been standardized to fit industrial processes, in an attempt to defy this unpredictability. Thanks to new advances in sensing technologies and computational design, today we have the opportunity to reintegrate the intrinsic properties of natural materials in their full complexity. What is the potential of a synthesis between the particularity of each specific material element-specific properties and parameters-informing the fabrication process? Digital and Robotic Fabrication are based on the use of flexible machines that open the possibility to mass-customize the production process. Combined with sensors and computational analysis, they allow to work with "soft systems", both adaptable and continuously evolving, whose dynamism is constantly fed by a flow of information. How can the designer integrate this uncertainty and complexity in the design process? In this paper the authors specifically discuss the management of structural and material tolerance inherent to large scale construction and anisotropic materials, such as wood. A series of projects developed and built at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and the Bartlett School of Architecture are used as case studies to investigate tolerance management in Digital Fabrication with different kinds of wood.

This research aims at developing an innovative methodology and the related computational workflow to design energy efficient buildings equipped with climate responsive building skins able to respond dynamically to environmental conditions changing over the time. This methodology, called Adaptive Building and Skin (AB&S), is applicable in different climate zones and consists of a computational form-finding method, which supports architects and engineers in the buildings' design process resulting in buildings with optimized energy performance and a high level of indoor and outdoor comfort under changing environmental conditions. The innovativeness of AB&S lies in the fact that it includes the entire design process and considers several internal and external inputs to find the best solutions at all scales of a project: starting from the micro urban-scale with the design of the site and of the building shape, down to the building-scale and finally the skin-scale. Applicability and functionality of AB&S has been tested and improved in the design of office buildings located in specific cities located in different climate zones (cold, temperate, tropical and subtropical). Results of the application in Berlin, Germany, are presented in detail in this paper.

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