Arc_Tech_Lab

The Arch_Tec_Lab embodies interdisciplinary collaboration and the integration of new technologies in construction. It showcases how digitalisation can enable resource-efficient, emission-free, and compact building.

Over the six years of its making, the largely digital planning and construction process involved architects, civil engineers, building service engineers, and construction physicists from ETH Zurich's Institute of Technology in Architecture. The central challenge was to explore how digital technologies and collaborative planning could create a resource-efficient, spatially compact structure that would serve as a model for future projects.

The Robotic Fabrication Lab (RFL), on the ground floor of the building, serves as a unique digital construction environment.The RFL is a multi-robotic system based on an overhead running gantry system covering the complete workshop space of the ITA building. Thus, a total of four six-axis robots can cooperatively work on a maximum volume of 43 by 16 by 8 metres. The RFL’s flexible and extendable configuration allows for a broad scope of different architectural design and construction experiments at full scale. The RFL will also enable to simulate robotic fabrication and human-machine cooperation on-site, as well as advanced automated factory-based digital fabrication processes. Apart from the core research in the field of architecture, the RFL is set up as a platform open to other disciplines, providing the means to conduct numerous research projects that are dependent on digital controlled spatial applications.