Fabrication Workshop

Overview of the Fabrication Workshop with students working on projects.

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UB has the best facilities for hands-on study, paired with instruction on digital resources and research possibilities.

- Julia Hunt, Architecture BS ‘17

As one of the premier fabrication facilities in the Western New York region, the Fabrication Workshop is the hub of our learning-through-making curriculum. Equipped for fabrication of all types, the shop serves both as a space to execute coursework and as a think-tank and makerspace for collaborative research with architectural practice and industry.

Full-scale maker space

The shop has room to assemble full height walls.
Our shop is central to student learning, especially a holistic, integrated approach to design.

- Nicholas Rajkovich, PhD, assistant professor of architecture

The Fabrication Workshop is a fully equipped facility occupying 7,000 square feet of high-bay space in Parker Hall on UB’s South Campus. Roughly broken into three distinct areas, the Fabrication Workshop houses the Shop for woodworking, metalworking, and assembly, and the digital FabLab, providing versatility to work across multiple scales from model and component building to full-scale prototyping and installations.

Learn more about the shop space
HOURS

Sunday -Monday:
10am – 8pm

Friday:
10am – 5pm

Saturday:
CLOSED

View the full online calenar

*On Sundays, Fabrication Workshop staff will process lasercut and 3D print jobs but will be unavailable to assist with file preparation and submission.

Equipped for any project

The shop has a large inventory of standard tools, including welding equipment.
If we don’t have a tool you need, we’ll find a place to get it. If the tool you need doesn’t exist, we’ll find a way to make it.

- Lindsay Romano, Director of Fabrication

Rooted in a culture of making, the Fabrication Workshop is dedicated to providing equipment for material research, model making, and fabrication through analog and digital processes, including CNC routing, laser cutting, 3D printing and a comprehensive selection of power tools. Students can also purchase materials and borrow basic hand tools from our store. 

Tools and resources available to students
Learn more about the Store

We're here to help

Let's problem solve together
Lindsay Romano.

Lindsay Romano
Director of Fabrication

Wade Georgi.

Wade Georgi
Manager, Shop Services

Dan Vrana.

Daniel Vrana
Manager, Fabrication Services

Need help with a tool or project? Our staff are here 12 hours a day ready to lend a hand. Experimenting with fabrication processes in your design research? We'll discover new methods and tools together.

Meet our staff

What we're making

'Thinking through making' is the pedagogical crux of our programs.

Korydon Smith, professor and chair of the department of architecture

Welded steel cages, CNC routed wooden enclosures and 3D printed ceramic molds are just some of the built works to emerge from our shop.

Waste to energy process illustration.
Unité de Révolution
11/27/17
At a time of sociopolitical unrest, citizens are involved in demonstrations with increasingly spatial qualities, harnessing a legitimized right to the city. The Origam[we] shield system, delivered in the form of appropriable DIY manuals, challenges institutional reproductions of power in political, professional, and pedagogical approaches to the design and construction of our environments.
sugar cane paper shell.
Sugar Shell
11/27/17
By crystallization of sugar molecules bonding to the fibers of the bagasse, this pulp mixture, when lifted in the air, creates a solidified thin-shell structure. A spatial condition in which light penetrates through the thin paper shell thus creating a harmonious lighting effect that is only experienced from the interior.  
Black walnut bent and cut into flexible shapes.
Investigating Flexibility
11/25/17
Black walnut has high strength when bent, and can easily be manipulated without saturation. Students investigate various species of wood to identify a workable balance of flexibility and strength. Layers, cut into 1/8" thickness, are laminated to create the spine and ribs of the boat form under development. 
example of form making project.
Form Making
10/4/17
This explores one of the many form-making strategies to produce a light, thin shell structure. Fabric is held in a delicate balance of tension and compression forces, stretching out to create a field condition rather than a solitary object in space. The soft fabric essentially floats above the ground, just barely suspended in place.
Students and faculty observe the results of crushing a concrete slab.
Crushing Concrete
7/18/17
The slab (a beam stretched thin) is perhaps the most ubiquitous and yet under-appreciated of all structural elements. They are present in virtually all of our buildings as they form the floors upon which we walk and the ceilings and roofs just above our heads.
Junior students and faculty have a review of their work in the fabrication workshop.
Junior Studio: Review
7/18/17
A boat is a vessel for transport by water - constructed to provide buoyancy by excluding water and shaped to give stability and permit propulsion. Throughout history boats have been instrumental in the development of civilization, affording humanity greater mobility than travel over land, whether for trade, transport, warfare, and the capacity for fishing. 
students build a hut in Costa Rica.
Study Abroad: Costa Rica
7/18/17
Sustainable Futures is a ten week course open to graduate students in architecture, landscape architecture and planning programs, and also by arrangement to students entering their fourth or fifth year of related programs. 
Interlock project.
Interlock
7/18/17
Architecture is an art because it is interested not only in the original need of shelter but also in putting together spaces and materials in a meaningful manner. This occurs through formal and actual joints. The joint, that is the fertile detail, is the place where both the construction and the construing of architecture take place.
-Marco Frascari
View featured faculty and student work
Timelapse video of student project - for junior studio - evolving from fabrication to assembly in the Fabrication Wrkshop and then activation in the community.

The spring 2019 junior architecture studio invited students to think about how climate change is impacting the world today. As part of the studio, students designed their own laufmaschine, a precursor to the bike from the early 19th century. Watch the evolution of one student team’s project, “Gazelle,” from fabrication in the shop to its run in the studio-wide relay race in Cleveland.

Research for the Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop, sponsored by Boston Valley Terra Cotta, culminates every August with a “maker faire” in UB's Fabrication Workshop and SMART Fabrication Factory. Students troubleshoot design, fabricate components and assemble full-scale prototypes.

Research for the Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop, sponsored by Boston Valley Terra Cotta, culminates every August with a “maker faire” in UB's Fabrication Workshop and SMART Fabrication Factory. Students troubleshoot design, fabricate components and assemble full-scale prototypes.