Image of Arroyo Bridge spanning an L.A. Canyon
The Arroyo Bridge spans an L.A. canyon with a robot-fabricated steel structure

Over the last few years, the Los Angeles area has seen a great influx of infrastructural and placemaking projects that emphasize the status of the pedestrian within the city, ranging from Frank Gehry’s reenvisioning of the L.A. River to the ongoing construction of Destination Crenshaw. The Arroyo Bridge, which wrapped up construction at the beginning of the pandemic but was only recently

rendering of a ranch-style 3d-printed home
ICON teams with Lake|Flato Architects for a 3D-printed, ADU-equipped Austin home

ICON, the Texas-based robotics and advanced materials construction company with lunar ambitions, has announced a new series of (earthbound) 3D-printed homes designed in collaboration with a slew of top architects. San Antonio- and Austin-based Lake|Flato Architects is the first to be tapped for the so-called Exploration Series, which according to ICON, will “develop new design languages and architectural vernaculars” with collaborating architects

A dam being deposited by robots
Because of labor shortages, this Japanese dam is being built by robots

Japan is facing a labor shortage: As the country continues to age, with 35 percent of the workforce is over 55, the construction industry is looking towards new ways to fill its widening labor gap (Japan has been relaxing its notoriously strict immigration policy towards lesser-skilled workers, but very slowly). One of those solutions is

A timber interior with a spiral staircase and large plate glass windows.
Architects apply the latest in fabrication, design, and visualization to age-old timber

Every so often, the field of architecture is presented with what is hailed as the next “miracle building material.” Concrete enabled the expansion of the Roman Empire, steel densified cities to previously unthinkable heights, and plastic reconstituted the architectural interior and the building economy along with it. But it would be reasonable to question why

An image of a timber-finned kiosk on the harbor front with skyscrapers visible in the background and a statue visible in front. Overlayed on the picture is the wooden fins both open and closed.
This seaside kiosk in Hong Kong uses robotics armatures for a cinematic effect

Hong Kong-based firm LAAB Architects has realized the robotic Harbour Kiosk along the Avenue of the Stars, a stretch of the city designed as a tribute to Hong Kongese cinema, on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront. Originally asked to create a 108-square-foot food kiosk, the architects instead opted to combine the kiosk with a nearby

A render of a city with sloping roofs glowing at night in front of a snow-capped mountain.
BIG’s first project in Japan is a high-tech mobility incubator for Toyota

Yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Toyota and BIG unveiled a new concept for a high-tech “Woven City” to be built at the car maker’s 175-acre former factory site at the foothills of Mount Fuji, in Japan. “In Higashi-Fuji, Japan, we have decided to build a prototype town of the future where

A yellow four-legged robot dog on a construction site, one of the Spot models from Boston Dynamics
Roaming robot dogs could streamline jobsite documentation

Reality capture has revolutionized construction by increasing job site efficiency and safety and allowing for quick responses to design and building challenges. However, save for the use of drones, often operated by humans, on-the-ground monitoring has required the relatively traditional (and labor-intensive) task of walking around and taking photos and collecting data to feed into

A drone on a lawn in front of a miniature roof on the ground.
University of Michigan researchers arm a drone with a nailgun

There have been many uses proposed for drones: photography and videography, certainly; package delivery, and aerial 3D mapping. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan have proposed yet another possibility for these scaled-down aircraft—as flying nailguns. While the FAA may have banned people from attaching flamethrowers to their octocopters, U of M researchers say the

A wide angle shot of a concrete roof structure foregrounded with trees and with the city in the background.
SOM shows off the sustainable potentials of robotic fabrication

For the Chicago Architecture Biennial opening on September 19, SOM debuted a concrete pavilion called Stereoform Slab to showcase the latest in material and manufacturing technology. As much as 60 percent of a building’s carbon footprint can result from the creation of concrete slabs, according to SOM. By developing new fabrication methods and integrating robotic

A robot in the form of a metal box is attached to various red cables and suspended a few feet in the air, unveiled for the Bauhaus centennary
To celebrate the Bauhaus centennial, German researchers show off new robot printer

This summer, to celebrate the centenary of the Bauhaus, the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in Weimar, Germany, hosted an exhibition called sumaery2019. At the exhibition, the university showcased some of the latest innovations in robotics, displaying a cable-driven robot that 3D printed cementitious material, designed by a team led by professor Jan Willmann, in cooperation with the

Nine concrete columns are lit below in front of a mountain in a nighttime scene thanks to the team from ETH Zurich
Researchers and students at ETH Zurich print complex columns for dance festival

For the Origen Festival in Riom, Switzerland students in the Masters of Advanced Studies in Architecture and Digital Fabrication program at ETH Zurich, guided by researcher Ana Anton, 3D printed nine unique, computationally-designed columns with a new layered extrusion printing process developed at the university over the past year and a half. ETH students and

A blue drone made for 3D printing with pink and blue glowing blades floats in front of a glass building.
GXN thinks the future of construction could be flying 3D printers

Most 3D printers, no matter their size, operate in a pretty similar way: they move along a grid to deposit material, sliding on axes in a fixed manner within a frame. Even those with more flexible arms remain fixed at a point. GXN, the research-focused spinoff of the Danish architecture firm 3XN, is looking to

A model in a structured, widening dress comprising slits of fabric walks through a ring of rotating silk leaves designed by Iris van Herpen
Iris van Herpen collaborates with architects for hypnotizing couture presentation

Since Dutch designer Iris van Herpen opened her eponymous atelier in 2007, the brand has become the face of high-tech fashion. Often the first to embrace new technologies like laser cutting and 3D printing in her fluid and futuristic forms, van Herpen has designed pieces worn by the likes of Solange and Rihanna, and, on the

An upward shot of an interlocking, biomorphic fiber structure presented at Exhibit Columbus
Exhibit Columbus’s inaugural fellow program to feature high-tech pavilions

Exhibit Columbus, the annual celebration of mid-century and contemporary design in Columbus, Indiana, will be showing off new possibilities of materials that unify support and envelope. This August,  two of the festival’s six University Design Research Fellows will present this work as part of a brand new fellowship program.  Marshall Prado, a professor at the

A gif of a woman jumping rope, while two robots twirl the rope
Could jump roping robots change how we think about architectural drawing?

“Movement was always an underlying instigator to how I look at form,” explains architect Amina Blacksher, who began ballet at age six. Her work crosses boundaries and unifies seemingly disparate practices, as she now, among many other things, uses the tools and methods of an architect to investigate the place of robots in our lives

6 elements in the evolution of a floor plan—starting with disparate gray circles and eventually winding up in a coherent, multicolored map
Could buildings be evolved instead of designed?

What if we could “breed” buildings to be more efficient? That’s the provocation by artist, designer, and programmer Joel Simon, who was inspired by the potentials of 3D printing and other emergent digital manufacturing technologies, as well as his background in computer science and biology, to test a system of automated planning. With a series

Photo of a robot arm in front of a sign reading "TOGGLE"
Brooklyn-based startup is using robots for rebar assembly

Two Brooklyn-based construction entrepreneurs began their business with a simple observation: steel rebar, used in concrete construction throughout the world, isn’t always easy to work with. Ian Cohen and Daniel Blank noticed this when they were watching wind turbines being erected. “Watching the process of people manually moving these huge, heavy objects looked dangerous and

Rendering of a table with succulents in the foreground of a sleek white interior with purple and blue lighting
The solar-powered FutureHAUS is coming to Times Square

New housing is coming to Times Square, at least temporarily. The Virginia Tech team of students and faculty behind the FutureHAUS, which won the Solar Decathlon Middle East 2018, a competition supported by the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority and U.S. Department of Energy, will bring a new iteration of its solar-powered home to New

Swiss researchers enlist the help of robots to build high-tech showhome

ETH Zürich’s high-tech showhome opened its doors this past week. The three-story DFAB HOUSE has been built on the NEST modular building platform, an Empa– and Eawag–led site of cutting-edge research and experimentation in architecture, engineering, and construction located in Dübendorf, Switzerland. The 2,150-square-foot house, a collaboration with university researchers and industry leaders, is designed

Seoul’s Robot Science Museum will be its own first exhibition

The soon-to-be-built Robot Science Museum in Seoul, South Korea, will be a robotics exhibition itself. The museum, to be designed by Turkish firm Melike Altınışık Architects (MAA), will be built by robots when construction begins next year. In this way, the construction of the building itself will be the museum’s “first exhibition,” according to principal

Australian company aims to build 10 homes this year with autonomous robotic arm

Buzz around robotics in architecture has been steadily building for some time now, though it’s only in the last few years that the technology has seen much real-world action. However, robotic construction technology is seemingly one step closer to the commercial market as Australian company FBR has unveiled plans to bring its robotic bricklaying arm,

A Danish consortium is advancing the possibilities of concrete formwork

In Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city, a consortium of architects, engineers, and manufacturers are advancing the capabilities of concrete construction formwork and advanced design. This effort culminated in a recently unveiled 19-ton prototype dubbed Experiment R. The project, led by the Aarhus School of Architecture, Odico Formwork Robotics, Aarhus Tech, concrete manufacturer Hi-Con, and Søren Jensen Consulting Engineers, tackles the waste associated with

Autodesk puts R&D first with its BUILD Space in Boston

Meet the incubators and accelerators producing the new guard of design and architecture start-ups. This is part of a series profiling incubators and accelerators from our April 2018 Technology issue.  Located on the first two floors of a concrete-framed former army base in South Boston, Autodesk’s BUILD Space (BUILD stands for building, innovation, learning, and design), which opened in