16. novembre 2017
Rendering of completed DFAB House (Image: NCCR Digital Fabrication)
During Wednesday evening's keynote at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin, architect Matthias Kohler of Gramazio Kohler presented DFAB House, a project now under construction on the campus of Empa and Eawag in Dübendorf, Switzerland.
DFAB House came near the end of Kohler's lecture, which ran through many of his and Fabio Gramazio's innovative projects, both with their architectural practice and Gramazio Kohler Research, a part of the Architecture and Digital Fabrication department at ETH Zürich. One of the former's most recent projects is NEST, the Research Building and Guesthouse for the EMPA (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) in Dübendorf. The building literally serves as the canvas for DFAB House, which is being positioned on one corner of NEST's plug-in structure.
Perspective and exploded axonometric of DFAB House (Image: NCCR Digital Fabrication)
Per the brand new DFAB House website, "researchers from eight ETH Zürich professorships come together with industry experts and planning professionals in a unique way to explore and test how digital fabrication can change the way we design and build." Building upon their previous research projects (such as Rock Print and the robots installed in their MuDA show earlier this year in Zürich), DFAB House is being "digitally designed and planned but also built using predominantly digital processes, both on-site and off-site." The most attention-getting aspect built to date is the mesh-mold concrete wall (visible in the axon above and the video below) that serves as a room divider and structurally supports the concrete floor above it. Completion of DFAB House is slated for spring 2018.