ABSTRACT

ROBOTIC ADDITIVE FABRICATION In order to investigate the consequences of informing designs with the logic of physical materials and vice versa, we opened a research laboratory at ETH for the digital fabrication of full-scale prototypes and non-standard building parts (DFAB). For our first experiments, we chose a standard industrial robot. Its extreme flexibility, both in terms of the software that controls it and its physical capacities, allows us to program its movements and design the actual construction tools it selects for operations. For us, it is a veritable “personal computer” for construction. With this robot, we investigated the logic of additive fabrication, using the most elementary architectural building block – the brick. The resultant projects, described below, confirm that digital logic, both in design and fabrication, will lead to profound changes in architecture, blurring and ultimately dissolving the boundaries between analogue and digital realities. We stand at the very threshold of an exciting development and believe that we should, as architects and authors of design information, actively lead this process towards a new, contemporary, and integral understanding of architecture that is relevant to our age.