Design Team: Michael Davis, Alessandro Premier, Sarosh Mulla
Year: 2024
Exhibited at Marmomac 2024
Inspired by bone structures and natural growth patterns, Particle-Trail 2.0 merges computational design and biomimicry to shape modular, high-performance architectural elements. Its geometry enables novel spatial applications with minimal material use. Developed at DBT – ETH Zurich, the custom 3D printing process reclaims stone waste and uses an inorganic binder to achieve stone-like strength while minimizing carbon emissions and enabling circular fabrication. It was exhibited at Marmomac 2024 (Verona, Italy)
Kai Hsun Yeh, Kevin Seav, Karen A. Antorveza Paez, Shuyi Huang.2024
The construction industry faces significant environmental challenges, with cement production contributing up to 8% of global CO2 emissions. This study explores an alternative through microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP), which leverages microorganisms to precipitate CaCO3 at ambient temperatures, eliminating the need for carbon-intensive
kilns. This study explores the scaling of MICP for architectural applications, leveraging geometry to expand the system’s performance. The design process operates on multiple scales, including the microscale, where biomineralization occurs, the mesoscale, which focuses on geometric exploration, and the macroscale targets potential architectural applications. By optimizing porosity, the study presents a strategy to increase surface area, addressing the specific requirements of 3D-Printing Biocement. The resulting lightweight, porous structures demonstrate significant potential for material efficiency and sustainability, with applications in facade shading and acoustic partitions.
Chair of Digital Building Technologies, Chair of Physical Chemistry of Building Materials, Chair of Structural Design, ETH Zurich
3D printing is used for the most resource-intensive process in concrete construction: fabricating the formwork. Beyond economic benefits, 3D printing enables several types of geometric features which are a significant challenge for other fabrication methods. Undercuts, sharp inner edges and micro-structures are difficult to achieve with CNC milling or hot-wire-cutting. Therefore, for the formwork of the Smart Slab, different 3D printing technologies were used to efficiently take advantage of their unique capabilities. Binder jetting was used for the most part, while fused filament deposition was used for locally integrating building services within the slab.
Chair of Digital Building Technologies, Chair of Physical Chemistry of Building Materials, Chair of Structural Design, ETH Zurich
The Smart Slab enhances the excellent structural properties of concrete with a radical new aesthetic enabled by the 3D-printed formwork.
The pioneering construction method of the Smart Slab uses 3D-printed formwork for casting and spraying concrete in geometrically complex shapes. 3D printing overcomes the geometric limitations of traditional formwork fabrication methods. Furthermore, it enables the construction of integrative concrete elements with elaborate, free-form and highly detailed surfaces and smart construction details. 3D printing has the added benefit that geometric complexity and differentiation come at no additional production cost.
The Smart Slab is a 78-square-meter prestressed concrete slab discretized into eleven 7.4-metre-long segments. Each segment is unique and prefabricated with special interface features which facilitate on-site connection through post-tensioning tendons.
The geometry of the Smart Slab is structurally optimized for its challenging load-case, involving cantilevers of up to 4.5 meters. The material is distributed in a hierarchical grid of curved ribs, which vary between 30 and 60 cm in depth. In addition, the interstitial surfaces stabilize the grid and are only 1.5 cm thick. Consequently, the slab only weighs 15 tonnes, almost 70% less in comparison to a conventional solid concrete slab.
Haruna Okawa, ZongRu Wu, Aghaei Meibodi Mania, Benjamin Dillenburger, 2018
This thesis presents Neuronal Stool, a series of stools created using a generative design engine that combines 3D-printed sand moulds and aluminum casting, enabling users to explore design alternatives while considering material behavior and fabrication constraints.
Haruna Okawa, ZongRu Wu, Aghaei Meibodi Mania, Benjamin Dillenburger, 2018
This thesis presents Neuronal Stool, a series of stools created using a generative design engine that combines 3D-printed sand moulds and aluminum casting, enabling users to explore design alternatives while considering material behavior and fabrication constraints.
Andrei Jipa, Mathias Bernhard, Dr. Mania Aghaei Meibodi, Prof. Dr. Benjamin Dillenburger
Topology optimisation can be used as a design method to reduce material without affecting the functionality of an object. Despite being one of the most demanding economic sectors in terms of material consumption, the construction industry has not yet adopted such design methods. This is generally because computational optimisation algorithms produce complex solutions which are difficult to fabricate, especially at a large scale. This project investigates the feasibility of using additive manufacturing to produce large‐scale building components with optimised material distribution.
A two square metre demonstrator was developed through a hybrid process based on topology optimisation and mesh subdivision. A two‐dimensional evolutionary optimisation algorithm was used with the main goal to reduce material to a 0.25 set fraction of the initial amount while minimising deformations of the slab under uniform surface load. Boundary conditions were set to three fixed supports. The resulting geometry was 3D printed using sand binder-jetting and infiltrated with a stabilising resin.
Compared to a standard solid slab, the 3D printed slab uses 75% less material. This fact draws attention to the major potential and proposes a fabrication method based on additive processes which is viable at a large scale. Optimising the topology of building components can have a global impact in reducing material costs and the carbon footprint of constructions and infrastructure.
Digital Grotesque II – a full-scale 3D printed grotto – has premiered at Centre Pompidou’s ‘Imprimer le monde’ exhibition. This highly ornamental grotto is entirely designed by algorithm and materialized out of 7 tons of printed sandstone. It heralds a highly immersive architecture with a hitherto unseen richness of detail. The angles and perspectives by which the spectator can observe the grotto were simulated during the design process, and the form was then optimized to present highly differentiated and diverse geometries that forge a rich and stimulating spatial experience for the observer. A subdivision algorithm was devised to exploit the 3D printer’s full potential by creating topologically complex, porous, multi-layered structures with spatial depth. A single volume spawns millions of branches, growing and folding again and again. Hundreds of square meters are compressed into a 3.5m high block that forms an organic landscape between the man-made and the natural. Digital Grotesque II is a testament to and celebration of a new kind of architecture that leaves behind traditional paradigms of rationalization and standardization and instead emphasizes the viewer’s perception, evoking curiosity and bewilderment.
Digital Grotesque is the first human-scale immersive space entirely constructed out of 3D-printed sandstone. A complex geometry consisting of millions of individual facets is printed at a resolution of a fraction of a millimeter to dimensions of a 3.2-meter high enclosed space. Its geometry was entirely designed through customized algorithms. The application of 3D-printing technology in architecture has up to now been limited to prototyping or producing small-scale models. Material costs are high, machines have limited scales, and the majority of materials are not strong enough to fulfill construction requirements. Sand-printing technology has recently emerged as an additive manufacturing technique that overcomes these limitations. This technology is currently used primarily to create casting forms for industrial applications. Yet it has unique features that make it suitable to create architectural components. Specifically, it allows the fabrication of large-scale elements (currently up to 8 cubic meters in size) with high resolution and accuracy at a competitive price and in a short period of time. In compression, these printed elements behave similarly to natural sandstone. In using this 3D printed technology, ornamentation and free-form geometries are no longer a prohibitive cost factor. The scale of potential three-dimensional differentiation is brought to a micro-level. This technology promises a larger compositional and constructive freedom and a rationalized fabrication of unique, non-standardized architecture.
Andrei Jipa, Ana Anton, Lukas Gebhard, Benjamin Dillenburger
The Nubian Slab is a real-world 3D-printed structural concrete element for a residential building in Zürich. The vaulted slab proposes an innovative material-efficient construction method based on digitally fabricated thin shell stay-in-place concrete formworks. The method targets structural slabs, which contribute up to 60% of concrete consumption in architectural applications. The fabrication process is based on the ancient Nubian vaults. These roof structures feature self-supporting inclined masonry courses that can be built without temporary support. This traditional building technique inspired the proposed layered concrete extrusion process, with the 3D-printed concrete layers being analogous to Nubian brick courses. The key difference to conventional 3D concrete printing is the inclination of the extrusion layers, allowing shallow vaults to be produced suspended in thin air without additional supports. The paper presents the robotic 3D-printing setup with a custom nozzle, the fabrication-informed design considerations, and the current limitations of the process, focusing on the case study of a 16 m2 Nubian slab with an irregular perimeter installed in a residential building. Based on this case study, the paper outlines a comprehensive construction sequence for Nubian slabs, considering discrete prefabricated 3D-printed Nubian formworks, assembly details, reinforcement strategies, functional integration, and in-situ monolithic casting. The proposed 3D-printed Nubian slab system enables innovative material-efficient architectural design solutions that may accelerate construction times on site, facilitate mass customisation, automation and integration, and enhance structural performance while remaining compatible with traditional building practices.
