Block Research Group starts MAS Programme

An MAS programme from the Block Research Group (BRG) is about to start. After fifteen years of research and the latest applications in practice, participants in the Master of Advanced Studies ETH in Computational Structural Design (MAS ETH CSD) programme can now benefit from the experience of pioneers in sustainable construction. Programme co-director Tom Van Mele gives an insight into the new course and answers five questions about it.

Full-scale NEST HiLo roof prototype, Robotic Fabrication Lab, ETH Hönggerberg, 2017. Photo by Naida Iljazovic, © BRG
Tom Van Mele. Photo by Matthias Rippmann
Philippe Block. Photo by Juney Lee

1. Tom, after 15 years of BRG, you and Philippe Block decided to develop an MAS programme. You write in the MAS brochure that you ‘want to learn not only from the successful applications but also from unexpected events, challenges, and issues’. In a society that is so focused on success, why does it help to take time to talk about challenges and issues?

In many of our projects, we have had to deal with unforeseen circumstances during the execution phase, even when we felt like we had taken every detail into account in the design. I guess when working with digital design tools and digital fabrication processes, with seemingly infinite precision, it is easy to lose track of size and scale a bit, and of the real meaning of precision on a construction site.

When project results are presented in publications, there is never time or space to reflect on these events. During the MAS, we will revisit some of the challenges with the students and use them as a driver to develop robust mechanisms and strategies to deal with tolerances and precision in their own projects.

2. At BRG, you take inspiration from master builders by studying historical structural and construction principles. How can MAS students benefit from the past when working in today's AEC industry?

What we try to learn from historic structural and construction principles is how to work with the natural constraints of materials and structural systems, instead of just ignoring them by relying solely on an awkward accumulation of technological solutions.

By achieving strength through geometry and by applying materials only when and where they are most effective, stresses in building elements can be reduced, and connections can be simplified. This means that structural solutions can be better adapted to the available resources and technology in a given context.

The compression-only, masonry logic we so often use as a guiding principle in our projects is a good example of this, and is one of the approaches to structural design we will explore in detail with the students.

3. How will you transfer research into practice so MAS participants can apply it?

We have always tried to make our work available to the community in a transparent and reproducible manner, for example, by publishing our libraries and tools as open-source COMPAS extensions or Rhino Plugins. This has not only allowed others to build on our work, but has also been the mechanism through which we have been able to transfer know-how internally, from one generation of researchers to the next, eventually leading to the translation of some of those developments into professional practice through our spin-off VAULTED.

We will not only teach the students about the tools available in the open source community for sharing their work with other researchers or colleagues in their professional working environment, but also show them how to construct Building Information Models of innovative structural elements, independent of proprietary software solutions, and export such models to relevant exchange formats such as IFC.

4. The participants will work a lot with digital tools. Why is computational design so important for you to promote sustainable building practices?

Developing sustainable solutions for the construction industry involves many different constraints and requirements that have to be balanced carefully. It is virtually impossible to take into account all these competing considerations into the structural design process without fully integrated computational workflows.

Furthermore, in multidisciplinary teams, explicit control over transparent workflows is essential to the development of robust solutions that can be easily adapted to changing circumstances and requirements in a project.

5. You have been working in the ETH environment for some time now. How would you describe the atmosphere at the ITA and at ETH in general?

Working as a researcher at ETH is really amazing. You get to work with people from all over the world in an environment where the possibilities often seem almost endless. And although everyone is very driven and focused on their work, everything just always feels very simple and easy going.

Having an office in the ITA building on the Hönggerberg next to the woods and close to the river, and at the same time not far away from the centre of Zurich is of course not bad either. I am quite certain the MAS students will very much enjoy being here.

To find out more about the MAS ETH CSD programme, please download the brochure: https://brg.ethz.ch/teaching/mas