Twelve Years of Digital Fabrication Research, Built in Concrete

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

Prototype element: ribbed slab realised using paper formwork (Foldcast&FMAA) and slab-column connection realised using customised plywood formwork (DataB&TU Wien). Photo by Fabio Amicarelli

DFAB researcher Lucia Licciardello is leading the interdisciplinary NCCR DFAB project. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Concrete Structures and Bridge Design, Lucia herself focuses on design optimised structures with the goal of making optimised concrete structures code compliant. The goal, Lucia says, is to “try to use less material and concentrate the material where it is structurally needed.”

A Dialogue of Different Disciplines

This project spans six research groups and three spin-offs, each contributing a piece to the puzzle. Lucia, as an engineer, works closely with her architecture colleagues — the interdisciplinary approach helps harmonise the project. Working together with architects, she says, brings in different perspectives: "We discussed how the different aspects could communicate and how to model it so that it is visually pleasing." More perspectives mean more complexity, but also more solutions. "For me as a project leader, sitting together in these discussions means more input. We find out whether our solutions are compatible. We see how to make it work together."

Spin-Offs: From Academia to Construction Site

Three of the project's key industrial partners — Saeki, Foldcast and DataB — are spin-offs; the first two grew out of NCCR DFAB research. That origin shapes the collaboration in a particular way. Foldcast, emerging from the Fabrication and Material Aware Architecture research group at USI, supplies paper formwork for the ribbed slab. Saeki, an ETH spin-off emerging out of DBT, provides plastic formwork for the flat slab columns and slab–column connections. DataB, based in Austria and linked to TU Wien, contributes customised plywood formwork for the columns on the ribbed slab side.

Prototype element: slab-column connection realised using 3D-printed plastic formwork (Saeki&DBT). Photo by Lea Keller

Because these partners grew out of the same research environment, the working relationship carries a different quality. "They know the academic setting already because they were part of it," Lucia notes. The demonstrator becomes a platform to show what these spin-offs have achieved — and to apply their work at full scale on a real construction site. Former researchers are now industry partners.

Digital Fabrication Contributing to the Future of Construction

What the construction shows is a model for how new construction technologies enter the industry: by working hand in hand with it. Optimised concrete structures, digitally fabricated formwork, a lower embodied-carbon concrete mix developed by the group for Physical Chemistry of Building Materials, and a digitally guided excavator from the Robotic Systems Lab — each element represents a strand of NCCR DFAB research. Applied together, they form something that no single strand could achieve alone: "The NCCR DFAB tackled the challenges of the future of construction from different perspectives," Lucia says. "We want to look at a problem from different angles. When different technologies meet, you need to find ways to make them work together. We had to sit down in this project and figure that out."

The demonstrator will stand on ETH Campus Hönggerberg for around ten years.

Research groups involved:

• Chair of Concrete Structures and Bridge Design, ETH Zurich (Walter Kaufmann)
• Digital Building Technologies, DBT, ETH Zurich (Benjamin Dillenburger)
• Physical Chemistry of Building Materials, ETH Zurich (Robert Flatt)
• Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich (Marco Hutter)
• Fabrication and Material Aware Architecture, Università della Svizzera Italiana, USI (Ena Lloret Fritschi) — origin of Foldcast
• Institute of Structural Engineering, TU Wien (Patrick Huber)

Spin-off and industry partner:

• DataB
• Saeki
• Foldcast

Contractor:

• Strabag