Abstract
Despite a growing interest in robotic fabrication in academic research, its impact on the design of large-scale architectural typologies has not yet been explored. At the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore robotic fabrication was integrated in a design research studio to produce 1:50 scale models of mixed-use high-rise typologies. Its methodology aimed for the reconsideration of the traditional architectural model by directly linking the digital design process with physical manufacturing processes and tools. As such, it established a strong correlation between computational tools, material systems and robotic fabrication strategies. Since high-rises are strongly rooted in the industrialization of building, with repetitive elements stacked along the vertical axis, they represent an interesting architectural typology to be challenged by a new fabrication paradigm (Gramazio and Kohler 2008: Digital materiality in architecture. Lars Müller Publishers, Baden). This chapter presents customized robotic fabrication processes and tools that were developed in the 2 year long design research studio.
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Notes
- 1.
In Singapore more than 80 % of the population lives in high-rise and high-density flats built by the Housing Development Board (HDB).
- 2.
The Future Cities Laboratory is run at the Singapore-ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability (SEC), co-funded by the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) and the ETH Zurich. The design studio was run over two consecutive years, with a one-year program in each in 2012 and 2013. Participating students were from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) and National University of Singapore (NUS).
- 3.
Universal Robots UR5 robot arms are integrated in Guedel 2-Axes Linear Modules Type ZP-3.
- 4.
See Lim et al. (2013) for more details on the software environments.
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Acknowledgments
This work is part of a larger research project at FCL and demanded support from Prof Fabio Gramazio and Prof Matthias Kohler, senior researchers Jan Willmann, Silke Langenberg, and co-researchers Norman Hack and Selen Ercan. It was established at the Singapore-ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability (SEC), co-funded by the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) and ETH Zurich.
We would like to thank our students for their great efforts, whose projects are illustrated here: Petrus Aejmelaeus-Lindstroem, Pun Hon Chiang, Sebastian Ernst, Kai Qui Foong, Yuhang He, Pascal Genhart, David Jenny, Patrick Goldener, Lijing Kan, Sylvius Kramer, Ping Fuan Lee, Sven Rickhoff, Jean-Marc Stadelmann, Silvan Strohbach, Michael Stünzi, Martin Tessarz, Florence Thonney, Alvaro Valcarce, Fabienne Waldburger, Andre Wong and Tobias Wullschleger. The studio 2013 was conducted under both the ETH Zurich and the National University of Singapore (NUS) curricula. Special thanks go to our academic partners at NUS, Chye Kiang Heng, Yunn Chii Wong, Shinya Okuda and Patrick Janssen.
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Budig, M., Lauer, W.V., Petrovic, R., Lim, J. (2014). Design of Robotic Fabricated High Rises. In: McGee, W., Ponce de Leon, M. (eds) Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2014. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04663-1_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04663-1_8
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