The NCCR DFAB is about to close its final chapter with a demonstrator that will stay on the ETH Campus Hönggerberg. Now rising at ETH Zurich, it brings together twelve years of digital concrete research into a single structure. It embodies how digital methods can make concrete structures more…

Over more than a decade, the NCCR Digital Fabrication has turned a growing field into a recognised discipline. But behind the automated processes and impressive structures, another story has been unfolding. Postdoctoral Researcher Kim Helmersen and his colleagues at ETH Zürich have been looking into…

Nicholas Steven Hoban was part of the inaugural year of the MAS ETH DFAB programme in 2015. This year changed direction of his career — and eventually, Canadian architectural education.

Jonathan Leu is a laboratory technician in the concrete laboratory of the Institute for Building Materials at ETH Zurich. His path there took him through mechanical engineering studies at ETH, which he left behind in favour of the trades, an apprenticeship as a bricklayer, and years of work on…

A 7×7-metre concrete slab held in a paper mould. It sounds implausible — yet this is what the spin-off company Foldcast is about to demonstrate, offering the construction industry a way to cut formwork and concrete use and carbon emissions by up to 40%.

What does it mean to think and create with new technologies, rather than simply use them? That question will be addressed during the workshop sessions at the fourth edition of the Future of Construction Symposium, taking place at ETH Zurich, co-hosted by the NCCR DFAB and Design++.

The NCCR DFAB spin-off MESH - Robotic Construction has secured US$3.8M seed funding by ABB Robotics Ventures, Apprecia Capital, Shimizu Corporation, Sika, buildify.earth and Aargauische Kantonalbank.

The Swiss National Bank has unveiled a new banknote series. One of the selected motifs features NEST, the modular research platform of Empa in Dübendorf. On its uppermost platform stands the DFAB HOUSE, realised by the NCCR Digital Fabrication.

Yolanda Ziltener recently joined the technical RFL team – as the first woman in the technician team since the building opened in 2014. The position was advertised as part of the Women in Robotics initiative, with the explicit aim of bringing greater diversity to technical roles.

Researchers from FMAA at USI and GKR at ETH Zurich have developed a method to make concrete staircases lighter, more adaptable, and significantly less carbon-intensive. The result, the "Vertebra" staircase, uses about half as much concrete and produces 32% fewer CO₂-equivalent emissions than…