MAS DFAB PAVILION

What are the most basic parameters that distinguish a house from a pavilion? An elevated floor and multi-layered construction. Both of these are regularly skipped when dealing with digital fabrication applied to architectural scale.

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DESCRIPTION

Pavilion with an upper floor and cladding, robotic process with integrated pre-fabrication and complex spatial assembly

Research and teaching project done at Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zürich

Built

2016

ETH, Zürich, Switzerland

8 m x 10 m x 6 m

Wood beams connected with screws, wooden shingles as cladding

Rhino, Python, Grasshopper, Robot Studio

2x ABB IRB 4600 on a common linear axis

Teaching lead

Philipp Eversmann (project lead), BLOCK Research Group, ETH Zürich, Chair of Sustainable Construction, ETH Zürich

James Chenault, Alessandro Dell’Endice, Matthias Helmreich, Nicholas Hoban, Jesús Medina Ibanez, Pietro Odaglia, Federico Salvalaio, Stavroula Tsafou

James Chenault, Shiu Lun Cheung, Jorge Christie Remy-Maillet, José De Carvalho Paixao, Alessandro Dell’Endice, Larisa Gabor, Matthias Helmreich, Nicholas Hoban, Katrin Hochschuh, Wei Hsiao, Jesús Medina Ibanez, Ioannis Mirtsopoulos, Pietro Odaglia, Federico Salvalaio, Fabio Scotto, Stavroula Tsafou, Anastasia Zaytseva

NCCR Digital Fabrication, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)

The Pavilion Project, developed by eight MAS students attending the one-year MAS DFAB programme, used digital methods and technologies to realize a unique two-story timber structure. Throughout the project, multiple prototypes were designed, fabricated, tested and refined, leading to a final project proposal. In order to fabricate the final proposal, a new robotic setup was developed and installed. In an automated process, the robot precisely pre-cut and assembled over 4,000 different elements into large component pieces which together created the walls, floors and enclosure. The final prefabricated elements are composed of three-dimensional spatial trusses autonomously clad with cedar shingles. The pavilion was then installed by assembling the individual prefabricated elements on-site. The project was realized in collaboration with Block Research Group (BRG) and the Chair of Sustainable Construction, both associated with the NCCR Digital Fabrication. The MAS programme is offered within the Department of Architecture at the ETH Zürich.