Cord Read is the lead designer at Hinged, a design and fabrication company in Austin, Texas. He specializes in design and engineering of custom furniture, millwork, and architectural installations. Cord has a background in architecture with a focus in digital fabrication, which allows him to tackle each design problem in the most efficient and effective way.
Like other art media, Cord believes that space can be manipulated to shape and evolve how people experience the world around them. His research has focused on this belief. Using 3d scanning technology and digital simulation software, Cord created Interactivity, an iterative process of analyzing spaces to better understand how people interact with them. Physical mappings are generated by the process and are then used to design interactive installations that are placed back into the original space.
Cord’s interests also lie in the disconnect between the intricate architectural designs that can be created in the computer and real world fabrication methods that can’t always keep up. With a team of designers, Cord developed, a concrete casting method called Digiform. This method uses digitally reconfigurable 3D printed surfaces that can be programmed in numerous ways to mass-produce panels with non-repetitive geometries. This research was presented at the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) International Conference.
Exhibitions
2015 Tex-Fab 2015: Plasticity
2014 ACADIA 2014: Design Agency
2014 AIA Dallas - You've Got Five Minutes, Kid Presentation
2014 SKIN Digital Assemblies University of Houston College of Architecture
2014 ACES UTA Annual Celebration of Excellence by Students
2013 TOPOCAST_LAB Research Website