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Discrete Robotic Assemblies: Towards an automated Architecture
Full text linkThe projects featured in this paper aim to demonstrate the potential of Discrete Robotic Assembly in architecture. Although still in its early stages, this research proves that there is an increase in construction efficiency within a discrete design framework. The research shows how a limited set of assembly possibilities eases the automation of the manufacturing process and leads to a reduction of labour, construction time, and cost. This intrinsic link between discrete design methods and automation hints at a potential shift in the construction industry governed by a new paradigm in computational design, where architectural elements are defined from and for automation
3D Concrete Printing for Structural Applications
Full text linkRecent years have seen a rapid growth of additive manufacturing methods for concrete construction. Potential advantages include reduced material use and cost, reduced labor, mass customization and CO2 footprint reduction. None of these methods, however, has yet been able to produce additively manufactured concrete with material properties suitable for structural applications, i.e. ductility and (flexural) tensile strength. In order to make additive manufacturing viable as a production method for structural concrete, a quality leap had to be made. In the project ‘3D Concrete Printing for Structural Applications’, 3 concepts have been explored to achieve the required structural performance: applying steel fiber reinforcement to an existing printable concrete mortar, developing a strain-hardening cementitious composite based on PVA fibers, and embedding high strength steel cable as reinforcement in the concrete filament. Whereas the former produced only an increase in flexural tensile strength, but limited post-peak resistance, the latter two provided promising strain hardening behavior, thus opening the road to a wide range of structural applications of 3D printed concrete.
 
Sustainable Performance Optimization for Digital Housing
Full text linkWith natural resources depleting, sustainable solutions are becoming more and more a necessity. To deal with the depleting resources, the Dutch government aims to generate 14% of country’s energy consumption through natural resources by 2020. The Dutch built environment is estimated to be responsible for 38.1% of the total energy consumption. This means that investments and innovation within this area have high potential.
However, there are some indications that these goals cannot be met. New houses often meet these requirements but, with a growth of 0.8% per year, these only make up for a small portion of all projects. As a result, a strong focus lays on improving and renovating the existing housing market towards a sustainable and low energy environment. For this transition, information on the current housing market, possible renovation options and insight on the investments costs are required.
Within this PDEng-project the aim is to further develop WoonConnect, a digital tool that can help to speed up this transition for both renovation projects and new buildings
Structural Adaptation through Stiffness Tuning
Full text linkAdaptive design strategies have been employed to improve structural performances in terms of load-bearing efficiency and energetic impact as well as to achieve multi-functionality. In this work, we investigate a passive adaptation strategy that employs variable stiffness in robotically printed materials. This paper focuses on the design and robotic fabrication of a chaise longue that can change shape to function as both recliner and chair depending on user requirements. The approach is unique in the way computational design is linked with robotic production. In this context, the design of the chaise longue is not limited to a formal process, but extends to the synthesis of the material distribution layout in order to achieve the intended functional behaviour
Re-Printing Architectural Heritage: Exploring Current 3D Printing and Scanning Technologies
Full text linkAdditive Manufacturing (commonly known as 3D printing) technology has become a global phenomenon. In the domain of heritage, 3D printing is seen as a time and cost efficient method for restoring vulnerable architectural structures. The technology can also provide an opportunity to reproduce missing or destroyed cultural heritage, in the cases of conflicts or environmental threats. This project takes the Hippolytuskerk in the Dutch village of Middelstum, as a case study to explore the limits of the existing technology, and the challenges of 3D printing of cultural heritage. Architectural historians, modelling experts, and industrial scientists from the universities of Delft and Eindhoven have engaged with diverse aspects of 3D printing, to reproduce a selected part of the 15th century church. This experimental project has tested available technologies to reproduce a mural on a section of one of the church’s vault with maximum possible fidelity to material, colors and local microstructures. The project shows challenges and opportunities of today’s technology for 3D printing in heritage, varying from the incapability of the scanning technology to capture the existing cracks in the required resolution, to the high costs of speciality printing, and the limited possibilities for combining both printing techniques for such a complex structure.
 
4TU.Bouw Lighthouse projects + PDEng
Full text linkSpool has published previously four issues dedicated to projects, developed in a high-risk innovation programme: the so-called the 4TU.BOUW lighthouse projects. Initially, the main topic of this programme was Energy-Innovation, hence the name of this “thread”. This issue of Spool presents the last batch of Lighthouse projects as the programme came to a close.
 
Can a Building Be an Apparatus?
Full text linkWhen Michel Foucault introduces the term, dispositif, commonly translated as ‘apparatus’, he uses the architectural example of the Panopticon to illustrate how power is exercised. A building, according to this line of thinking, seemingly has the capacity to exercise control on its occupants. But is this really the case? This paper examines the thinking of Foucault on the subject, and questions to what extent we can conceive of a building as being in and of itself an apparatus. It goes on to explore Foucault’s subsequent reflections on the subject in his interview with Paul Rabinow, ‘Space, Knowledge and Power’, where he seems to qualify his earlier remarks on the Panopticon. It then opens up the theory of affordances to question whether a building – or any other entities that could be perceived as operating as a tool or mechanism within the social realm – has the agency to control behaviour. Finally, the paper introduces Gilles Deleuze’s subsequent remarks in ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’ where he contributes to the debate about the political agency of form by arguing that in our present age there has been an erosion in the hegemony of the physical, and current forms of control are more gaseous and invisible in their operations than a mere physical building. The paper concludes that it is too simplistic to regard a building in and of itself as an apparatus. At best it could be perceived as an element within a ‘system of relations’ that might constitute the apparatus
Happy Senior Living: 65+ Best Living Concepts
Full text linkIn developed countries, the share of the elderly (65+) is growing quickly. In the Netherlands it might reach 25 to 30% of the population by 2040 (see Figure 1). We design best living concepts for the elderly, based on a research in their residential preferences. Our novel methodology combines insights from social sciences and architecture. A stated choice experiment retrieves the willingness-to-pay of the elderly for a set of relevant attributes of the dwelling, building and location. The attributes with the highest valuation are used as an input for a flexible architectural design.
 
Product Development Lab (PD Test Lab)
No full textThe file to factory approach is investigated within the Product Development Test Lab, with the first entirely digitally produced building as a demonstrator and test lab on the campus of TU Delft. The project responds to the growing demand for sustainable and affordable housing; aiming to build houses with bio-based materials, efficiently produced with digital production technologies while reducing the failure costs on the building site. The full-scale prototype serves as a platform, ready to explore new methods of building sector related product design. The cycle of designing, testing, evaluating, redesigning, and retesting serves as research lead, enabling the designers to work quickly and make improvements on the go
Double Face 2.0: A lightweight translucent adaptable Trombe wall
No full textDouble Face 2.0 is a novel solar wall, joining a strong design identity and high technical performances. In response to the need for energy saving, new high-performance building elements are shape-optimised for passive climate design and to increase user engagement. Given a design concept, computational approaches help to optimise and to customise high-performance building elements for any environment. Double Face 2.0 has been developed by research through design involving designing, 3D modelling, robotic FDM printing, prototyping, experimenting, simulating, and simulation-based optimising. An adjustable, lightweight, translucent Trombe wall has been developed, using an insulator (aerogel) and heat storage (phase change material) encapsulated in optimised and customizable shapes. In winter, it captures, stores, and re-radiates heat from the sun (heating); in summer, it captures internal heat (cooling)