GC: We are doing a research about the return of ornament in architecture. In your opinion is this really happening? Have you done some programming related to ornament, working with surfaces and generating ornaments automatically?

MD: I think that ornament should come back. That means more work for us, because ornament is something that you can program and parameterize. I actually did a plug in for ornament. It's called Eve Ornament. But this plug in is not in my website for download because this one is not for free.

GC: And what does it do?

MD: My wife is an architect and she works for a big company that makes buildings in Meca, for Muslim clients. They have an ornament department with 30 people, and a couple of our friends work in that department. They try to do it parametrically but they don't have the skills, so I went there to show them what can be done. This is why I made this plug in, to show them. They can draw whatever they want inside the square, and they can populate a surface with that. We can also extrude it in 3D, or we can bend it... I made a couple of sliders to show them what you can do, and after that you can export it to a CNC machine. And I told them I did it in 2D, but you can have much more complex patterns, etc. And you know what happened after the presentation? They have some people in the office who can work with Grasshopper, so they called them to the meeting and after I left, they told them to try to do what I had just showed. After a year they did not really do anything useful, but they don't care because it's a huge office, they have 200 people working there, they have projects anyway...  Theoretically I could go to the king of Saudi Arabia and say: look I can do these ornaments parametrically, but how do I get to the king of Saudi Arabia? And does he care if he is paying one million or a hundred millions for the same thing? In the practical world it's very idealistic. I can do it better than them but they don't care. They will try to do it inside the office, and I face this every time: yes, you are more efficient, yes, you can do a lot, but they still (prefer trying to do it on their own).

GC: This is a very specific application of ornament for Islamic architecture. What about contemporary architecture in general? What is your opinion about it? Have you incorporated it in structural design?

MD: Not yet, but I would like to, because I believe in design inspired by nature, and I would like it know if the architecture of 2100 would have natural forms, like in science fiction, with Voronois, and that would include ornament, because nature is full of ornament. But I didn't have any contact with anyone who wanted to do that. I would really like to do some algorithm in that area, because I find it very interesting. Ornamentation is not necessary, and that bugs me a little bit because I like to do things that are efficient, necessary, it's my engineer side, but even being unnecessary it would still be very nice (to work on it)

GC: There is another topic that has been a subject of our research, which is detailing, or more specifically digital detailing. AD has recently published a special issue on the Future of Detail and Detail magazine also had a special issue on Digital and analogue Details. Do you think there is a new theory of detailing arising from this new form of designing with programming, and digital fabrication? 

MD: Yes, and this is another area in which I still didn't have the opportunity to do anything but in which I really, really wanted to go in. When you are doing free form architecture the details become very complex, and that's what I want to do; I want to do something that is very complicated. This is another reason why I don't work in the design phase, because they do things in a very conceptual and simple way. But once you have your shape you need to produce the façade elements and know how to connect them with screws and all that... For example, this Schüco parametric façade that I showed in my lecture (at CAAD Futures). I'm doing static analysis for different elements, because they have all different geometries. These elements can be triangular or quadrangular, and there are different types. They can look like a pyramid but the highest point can wonder around. You can make a façade in which every element is different but when they are put together they form an (emergent) pattern. And I told them let me do the details automatically, but they said no, we are doing that in-house.

GC: Are they doing it one by one?

MD: No, they are doing it automatically, but just in house. So this is the problem. They only call me for the things that they cannot do themselves. I would like to have connections so they would say let's this all together.

GC: There was another issue of AD about Zero Tolerance in architecture. What is your opinion about it? Do we still need tolerance with Digital Fabrication?

MD: We still work with tolerance, but the difference is that our tolerance is now 0.5 millimeters. Zero tolerance is only in theory, because production machines are not that precise, and you have to assemble on site, and there is expansion, etc. But I like the precision of it. You are asking the right questions: ornament, details, tolerance, this is what I like to do.