Where the Error Is Allowed to Happen — Cutting an Island
Every cut is a decision about where the error goes.
How the island in the previous entry was actually cut.
The Site Is the Most Expensive Place
A faceted volume is traditionally mocked up on site by the carpenter: a rough form is built, proportions are judged, what looks wrong is cut away and rebuilt, and the shape is settled after a few rounds. The problem is not craftsmanship. It is that the method leaves the judgement until last — and the site is the most expensive place to make it. The cost of one change is not that one operation; it is every trade behind it, pushed back.
Moving the Rules onto the Drawing
We took the whole geometry back into the digital model. The angle of each facet, the lines where they meet, the flat dimensions of every panel — all fixed at drawing stage. Once resolved, the substrate was cut straight on machine. What arrived on site were components that already fit; the crew was left with assembly and edges.
This is not about saving labour. It is about deciding where the error is allowed to happen. Build the same form by mock-up and the time goes into trial and error; build it by calculation and the time goes in up front, but only once. The error does not disappear. It is moved somewhere cheap.
"A shape that can be calculated is a shape that can be built a second time."