Digital Ceramics is an independent group research initiative, born out of the experimental work of professor Ronald Rael at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. It is built on re-configuring old ZCorp powder printers into real-material rapid prototyping tools. The research focuses on developing a fabrication technique for making building parts that is relatively quick, offers infinite variability at no added time or material cost, and takes advantage of already available low cost materials.

At the time of the research the idea of hacking model-making equipment to produce object from real materials was starting to gain a larger foothold in the architecture community and Ron Rael and his partner Virginia SanFratello have pioneered 3D printing methodology and continued to push it beyond its current edges through their research and their company Emerging Objects.