1.1 Current scenario
The last decade set a wide range of urgent and inescapable imperatives: greater awareness of environmental responsibility, energy use and its impact on global warming, the need to take ethical account of materials origin, depletion of resources and building waste \cite{2017}. After 200 years of industrial activities climate change is ravaging the planet with soil degradation, biodiversity loss, global warming and consequent aggravation of the urban heat island effect \cite{Taha_1997}, rising
sea levels, drought, and ocean acidification \citep{zapata-marti2007}. Buildings worldwide account for 40% of global energy consumption\citep*{2012a}, at the same time the building sector is expected to reduce consumptions up to 53% by 2030.
Furthermore the global economy is in crisis, GDP is slowing all over the world due to the inability of the infrastructure (both digital and physical) to adapt to society demands: in the last 20 years productivity has been declining \cite{rifkin2011}. We have been neglecting thermodynamic laws, energy changes form in only one direction and at every step of conversion some energy is lost. Improving the system with better machines and better workers doesn't affect productivity anymore because machines and workers accounts for only 40% of productivity, the rest 60% relies on aggregate efficiency which has now reached its ceiling in many countries (Japan is leading the world with a mere 20%). If the business is still plugged into a second industrial revolution infrastructure aggregate efficiency will remain the same. Therefore according to Jeremy Rifkin the key for a new sustainable growth is to raise aggregate efficiency trough the convergence of digitalization, automation and renewability in the terms of communication, transportation, energy \cite{economy2018}.
The digital revolution
1.2 Problem statement
Computational design and digital fabrication are offering an unseen opportunity for redemption in the field of construction, the flexible nature of advance manufacturing technology is more than just an enabler of formal complexity; it is rather leveraged as a chance to replan the whole design-to-production chain\cite{2014}. We often hear about "re-thinking" or "re-inventing" building sector because conventional processes are no more sustainable, not only environmentally but socially and economically as well.
Indeed in the broaden context of Industry 4.0, the construction field is implementing its adaptivity trough parametric performative design based on data and digital fabrication machines and tools. The 4th industrial revolution is providing a wide contamination of knowledge in the “age of entanglement” \cite{oxman2016}: the multidisciplinary, or better, according to \citet{ito2016} antidisciplinary approach breaks the boundaries between disciplines. This allows an extraordinary understanding of the entire construction process: as in the Renaissance the designer has the chance to access, control and manage a large amount of knowledge in the form of data. For instance materials or structural properties are fundamentally embedded in the design phase. Furthermore it is challenging the assumptions that underly mass production allowing “individuals to design and produce tangible objects on demand” \cite{gershenfeld2012} enabling then a democratic advanced customization.
However, even though the digital revolution is having a deep impact on architecture and construction we are still attached to conventional methods, we 3D print bricks in clay or concrete houses with the same shape we did with traditional architecture, we employ automation as a working force for its precision and complexity-enabling skills
1.3 Informed matter
We must be able to embed information into materials and
have smarter parts, not just smarter machines
Natural phenomena such as growth, evolution and self-organisation are no longer only studied in design as mere metaphors or digital simulations. Rather, they can now be utilised in physical materials and fabricated systems.