The construction industry needs to gradually change, if you believe the Creators of the DFAB House in dübendorf. The first four letters stand for Digital Fabrication to introduce a new culture of building. “The job profile will change in the future for architects, planners and craftsmen,” says Matthias Kohler, ETH-Professor for architecture and digital fabrication.
What does that mean, shows the prototype of a house designed digital, and largely built, was planned. Kohler has developed together with the ETH architects Konrad Graser, the concept for the unique, three-storey building. The house stands on the top platform of innovation, building the Nest of the materials research Institute Empa and the aquatic research Institute Eawag.
the Nest is a large research laboratory where, in real time, under real conditions, new developments will be used only in laboratory-proven. Here is planned, lived and slept – and all in a technological environment, who else is out there practically anywhere. So will it be in the DFAB House. “It is the world’s first fully-functional house, which was designed on the Computer,” says Kohler. Involved were Researchers, 8 professors of the ETH Zurich and 25 Swiss companies.
New options
The house offers something for every feeling. Cozy it is, for example, on the Sofa in the Spartan decorated niche of the curved concrete wall that separates the living room. It is the product of a mobile Bauroboters. The machine has been designed to place the lattice structure, which is, as it were, formwork and reinforcement. A specially designed concrete was poured and Hand-passed. The wall of the well 16 tons of heavy concrete ceiling that is noticeable through intricate ornament structures.
The most labor-intensive part of a 3-D printer took over. He set up the formwork parts, which were then filled with fiber reinforced concrete. The ceiling were pre-produced elements for the Assembly.
image range: Digital planned digital
Who have a lot of light, feel, and thanks to the glass fronts in the living room. Fifteen individually molded concrete posts to carry the window. The tailor-made columns were produced by a digitally-controlled slipform method. This means: A movable formwork is filled with concrete, shaping the material while Curing to a pole. The components are specied in a production hall prefab.
The top two floors are made for wood lovers. You are construct of a complicated Bar. Two Robot designed in the Robotic Fabrication Lab at the ETH Zurich with the 487Balken millimeter six framework modules, which were then assembled at the building site.
resources to realize savings
“We could, which was five years ago, even unattainable,” says Kohler. The costs have not stood still in the centre, environmental and energy questions have not been hidden, but for this project the secondary. First and foremost, it was about innovative building technologies in the laboratory, in real terms, apply.
“But it was also about a new way of dealing with resources,” says Kohler. Thanks to the new digital process, the concrete is, for example, the ceiling only a third as heavy as conventional concrete slabs. Material and time were saved during the construction of the curved wall by the Robot. The facade in the upper two floors consists of two membrane plates made from special plastic with Aerogel insulation between them. You should be a conventional building insulation equal. With the difference: The façade is a maximum of 12 inches thick and completely recyclable.
“The technology used is one of many applications that you will change the work processes,” says Konrad Graser, a senior architect of the project. Because the digitalization of the culture of building opened for architects and planners on new dimensions. “The architectural potential is immense,” adds Matthias Kohler. The technologies are coming but still barely on the construction sites. The automation is similar to the digitization in the auto industry. The Problem, however, is that robots are very flexible when the environment changes. And on construction sites often the case.
industry is still uncertain
How quickly the digital fabrication in the building industry is spreading, no one can say. “Our members oscillate between fear, rejection and euphoria”, is Stefan Cadosch cited in a Blog of the Swiss Academy of technical Sciences. Cadosch, President of the Swiss society of engineers and Architects. Fears that you miss the development, however, be unfounded, the associations would have enough time to make changes.
The digitization is changing the world of work in the construction industry, anyway. The robot is not to replace, according to the ETH-architect Matthias Kohler the craftsman. “He is a Supplement. Craftsmen, we need to be practical Knowledge must not be lost”. The robot led only Work, repeat. “Through the digital possibilities of the cooperation between architects, planners and craftsmen, but starts already in the design phase,” says Kohler.
Build, so the Creator of the DFAB House are convinced, will, in the future, creative.
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 27.02.2019, 19:14 PM
