Constructing Change: The Impact of Digital Fabrication on Sustainability

Every year, nearly 100 billion tonnes of raw material globally is extracted from the earth – approximately half of it for construction purposes. The construction industry is responsible for an estimated third of global waste, while reuse of construction materials is not increasing fast enough. The same sector accounts for at least 40 per cent of global carbon-dioxide emissions. There is thus an urgent need to showcase how novel approaches in digital fabrication might be able to enhance thesustainability of buildings and transform construction. Featuring specialists from architecture, engineering and materials science, this AD presents innovative research and new construction systems, approaches and trends to demonstrate how existing methods and unique concepts that utilise cutting-edge technologies can, in a short space of time, help us advance towards a culture of sustainable construction. It focuses on digital design and manufacturing, including XR technologies, and highlights unique ways to build with earth or concrete.

Contributors: Fabio Amicarelli; Ana Anton and Benjamin Dillenburger; Tobias Bonwetsch and Tobias Huber; Mario Carpo; Sasha Cisar; Jelle Feringa; Corentin Fivet; Abel Gawel; Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler; Norman Hack; Silke Langenberg, Sarah M Schlachetzki and Robin Rehm; Daniela Mitterberger and Kathrin Dörfler; Romana Rust and Inés Ariza; and Timothy Wangler, Yamini Patankar and Robert J Flatt

Featured architects: Terrestrial and Rematter AG

Dr Ena Lloret-Fritschi research's construction processes in architecture at the interface between architecture and digital fabrication. She is particularly interested in exploring the architectural potentials of concrete and earth-based construction materials and their synthesis in new technologies. In 2022, Ena joined the academy of Architecture in Mendrisio (ARC USI) to establish the Fabrication- & Material-Aware Architecture group. Her research targets to provide architects and builders with design tools and processing methods that enable them to build with less waste and less materials ― thus developing design and processing strategies that lower the CO2 footprint of our built structures. In addition, she is a principal investigator within the NCCR Digital Fabrication DFAB, focusing on sustainable concrete construction. Before her academic career, she worked as an architect in offices like OMA, in the Netherlands, Dietrich Untertrifaller, Austria and as an independent architect, where she received several prizes. She holds a master's degree in Architecture from the Architectural Association London and a PhD from ETH Zurich (2018).

Dr. Selen Ercan Jenny is a trained architect and a digital fabrication researcher. Her research focus has revolved around on-site robotic fabrication, leading projects such as the Mobile Robotic Tiling – a project that aims to bring research to its industrial application. Since June 2018, she is a PhD researcher at ETH Zurich as part of an interdisciplinary construction robotics team, which operates at the meeting point of architecture, construction, sensing and robotics. Her research focus is on developing an innovative additive manufacturing technique, Robotic Plaster Spraying (RPS) – a thin-layer, high resolution, spray-based, vertical printing-in-motion approach – for automating plastering on-site, in one integrated step, without the use of additional formwork or support structures or any subtractive steps (i.e. troweling for shaping or smoothing), minimising waste.

David Jenny is a practising architect and researcher focusing on digital fabrication and computational design methods. He is a senior research associate at the Centre for Building Technologies and Processes, Zurich University of Applied Sciences. He holds an MSc in Architecture from ETH Zurich, where his diploma project on algorithmic methods for housing design was awarded the SIA master prize. He has worked in architectural offices in Switzerland and Japan and as a researcher at the Future Cities Laboratory, in Singapore. From 2015-2021 he was part of Gramazio Kohler Research at ETH Zurich, responsible for courses in the Architecture curriculum, leading the teaching projects of the post-graduate program MAS ETH in Digital Fabrication.