The Next Energy-Efficient Architecture Revolution: A House Built By Robots (qz.com) 54
"Erecting a new building ranks among the most inefficient, polluting activities humans undertake," reports Qz. "The construction sector is responsible for nearly 40% of the world's total energy consumption and CO2 emissions, according to a UN global survey. A consortium of Swiss researchers has one answer to the problem: working with robots."
Over four years, 30 different industry partners joined a team of experts at ETH Zurich university for a cutting-edge "digital fabrication" project: building the DFAB House. Timber beams were assembled by robots on site, it used 60% less cement, and it features some amazing ceilings printed with a large-scale 3D sand printer. "This is a new way of seeing architecture," says Matthias Kohler, a member of DFAB's research team. The work of architects has long been presented in terms of designing inspiring building forms, while the technical specifics of construction has been relegated to the background. Kohler thinks this is quickly changing. "Suddenly how we use resources to build our habitats is at the center of architecture," he argues. "How you build matters."
DFAB isn't the first building project to use digital fabrication techniques. In 2014, Chinese company WinSun demonstrated the architectural potential of 3D printing by manufacturing 10 single-story houses in one day. A year later, the Shanghai-based company also printed an apartment building and a neoclassical mansion, but these projects remain in the development phase. Kohler explains that beating construction speed records wasn't necessarily their goal. "Of course we're interested in gaining breakthroughs in speed and economy, but we tried to hold to the idea of quality first," he says. "You can do things very, very fast but that doesn't mean that it's actually sustainable...."
Beyond the experimental structure in Switzerland, Kohler and Dillenburger explain that they're interested in fostering a dialogue with the global architecture and construction sectors. They've published their open-source data sets and have organized a traveling exhibition titled "How to Build a House: Architectural Research in the Digital Age," opening at the Cooper Union in New York this week.
Over four years, 30 different industry partners joined a team of experts at ETH Zurich university for a cutting-edge "digital fabrication" project: building the DFAB House. Timber beams were assembled by robots on site, it used 60% less cement, and it features some amazing ceilings printed with a large-scale 3D sand printer. "This is a new way of seeing architecture," says Matthias Kohler, a member of DFAB's research team. The work of architects has long been presented in terms of designing inspiring building forms, while the technical specifics of construction has been relegated to the background. Kohler thinks this is quickly changing. "Suddenly how we use resources to build our habitats is at the center of architecture," he argues. "How you build matters."
DFAB isn't the first building project to use digital fabrication techniques. In 2014, Chinese company WinSun demonstrated the architectural potential of 3D printing by manufacturing 10 single-story houses in one day. A year later, the Shanghai-based company also printed an apartment building and a neoclassical mansion, but these projects remain in the development phase. Kohler explains that beating construction speed records wasn't necessarily their goal. "Of course we're interested in gaining breakthroughs in speed and economy, but we tried to hold to the idea of quality first," he says. "You can do things very, very fast but that doesn't mean that it's actually sustainable...."
Beyond the experimental structure in Switzerland, Kohler and Dillenburger explain that they're interested in fostering a dialogue with the global architecture and construction sectors. They've published their open-source data sets and have organized a traveling exhibition titled "How to Build a House: Architectural Research in the Digital Age," opening at the Cooper Union in New York this week.
Easy to say.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Benjamin Dillenburger, the 3D printing specialist in DFAB’s team, adds that learning to work with robots may even safeguard the health of construction workers. “One should not romanticize the jobs on the construction sites,” he warns. “[It] really makes sense to have this kind of collaborative setups where robots and human work together.”
Easy to say, when your 'innovation' is endangering someone else's job. Also, anyone who deals with safety issues around robots or actually works around robots knows having humans close to those things is a recipe for disaster. MAAAAAYBE when real AI and not the half-arsed algorithm soup we call AI today is around we can work closely with robots, until then they're still best on the other side of the yellow tape out of the fragile human's way.
Oh, and you don't "collaborate" with a robot any more than you "
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... Oh, and you don't "collaborate" with a robot any more than you "collaborate" with your circular saw. Who's the one doing the romanticizing here Mr. Dillenburger?
You do collaborate when the robot is being teleoperated or when it has a high enough IQ.
Jobs are never the goal (Score:3)
A thought-exercise... Suppose, someone invents a medicine — or a medical procedure — that eliminates all illnesses. It is reasonably cheap (say, $1000 per course) and needs to be administered (orally) once per person's lifetime.
Would you seriously object to its acceptance and world-wide rollout — or grudge about either — on account of all these hard-working doctors and nurses losing their jobs?
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Don't be obtuse. Doctors will still be around to handle accidents and the unforeseen.
You'd need a hell of a lot fewer of them though. There's no doubt that without illness a lot of doctors and nurses would lose their jobs.
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Exactly the same is true about the construction workers even if robots start doing most of that work.
Now, quit dodging, and answer the question...
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In all previous labor shifts historically, people were moving from one job to a new job creating new value from Labor. Roboticization will be Capital completely erasing the utility of Labor.
As we head down this path new better jobs are NOT showing up. We've turned taxi drivers into "ride sharers", soon even those will be replaced with robot cars. Just wait till robots hit trucking.
Some few VERY cutting edge people will get jobs programming algorithms, out of the very few who even understand what's going
How maintainable are the 3D printed houses? (Score:2)
How maintainable are the 3D printed houses?
Consider the water pipe that develops a leak (or the roof that leaks). Walls, ceilings, and/or floors may have to be torn open to gain access to the pipe or replaced (interior surface not the framing underneath/behind) due to water damage.
So framing escaped the water damage,
More jobs that illegals can not take from citizens (Score:1)
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What makes you think you couldn't get a bespoke house designed and built with the same robots?
Unless your specifically planning to use exotic building materials ( log cabin?). These "robots" mostly use extruded cement mixtures now with some pick and place piping/ducts, but no reason they won't be doing stick built in a few years.
3D printed houses look like mud dauber hives (Score:4, Interesting)
The technology right now is dog shit unfortunately. A concrete pump hung out the end of a polar or cartesian system laying down long turds of wet concrete that need to at least partially set by the next lap or you're in trouble. Windows and doorways still require human attention and there's no system in place to handle electric or plumbing.
SO residential construction isn't going to move to this in the first world any time soon. However if the materials can be sourced locally it's definitely good for emergency housing. You could put the whole rig on a trailer and make basic disposable shelter for folks displaced by storms in a half day.
For first world residential you could definitely make robots for drywalling, siding, painting and roofing. Framing would be next, followed by flooring, plumbing and electrical.
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I don't blame anyone for still using concrete, it's pretty much the only thing like concrete that we have. This is not exactly the solution we were looking for however.
It is difficult to imagine any method that could be applied to all construction that would be helpful. If you are imagining that you will only need to build single-fa
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And 3d printing has never been shown to be more energy efficient than other methods, including manual labor. These article authors start with the assumption that it must be better, never even think to validate those claims. They fall for the PR stunt because they have no understanding at all of what they are talking about.
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Exactly, concrete and steel are not environmentally friendly building materials. Wood construction has the benefit of carbon sequestration.
Concrete and steel can be produced with nuclear heat, and the structures built with such materials have the potential to last substantially longer. They can also be built taller, requiring less land. Wood will always come from trees, and tree farms also count toward lost habitat. Endless suburban sprawl is not exactly a model of sustainability, and I'd rather not be in a stick house when a tornado comes through.
And 3d printing has never been shown to be more energy efficient than other methods, including manual labor. These article authors start with the assumption that it must be better, never even think to validate those claims. They fall for the PR stunt because they have no understanding at all of what they are talking about.
The media are doing great harm pedaling fantasies based on ignorance. However, whatever the resul
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The proboem wuth concrete is not energy used in its creation (of cement really, not concrete itself) but thaty making it involves burning large amounts of limestome that gives off massive amounts of CO2 to get the desired product.
I heard 4% or 7% of *all* emissions comes from cememt production.
If you want to be "green", you have to make your buildings out of something else, like wood. Or stop increasing the population so much that construction demand is so great.
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Only bout 40% of the CO2 ever gets recaptured, so no, it is not CO2 neutral regardless of the timescale. Normally the process maxes out after about 50 years.
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I'd rather not be in a stick house when a tornado comes through.
Damn right.
I'll stick with my straw house, thank you.
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I don't blame anyone for still using concrete, it's pretty much the only thing like concrete that we have. This is not exactly the solution we were looking for however.
In this context, you can achieve the same kinds of goals with Earthbag construction [wikipedia.org]. It's easy to imagine a machine that poops out dirt bags.
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A robot pressing straw together? So its extra green...
Compressed straw bales are based on topsoil, but earth bags are based mostly on just dirt, which is a lot more readily available (and lower impact.) Though there is still some plant matter involved in Earthbags obviously, due to the bags... though you can use woven plastic sacks for that, too. Those could be bioplastic, or they could be reused (or both.)
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Re: 3D printed houses look like mud dauber hives (Score:2)
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One thing that would save heating and cooling energy and simplify construction: getting rid of windows.
At least where I have lived in the US, windows are required by law for various justifications like rescue access, providing construction jobs, because the company making the windows payed the legislature or regulator, for greater tax assessments, whatever. Take your pick but energy savings which does not provide rent seeking is not going to overcome any of them.
So my point is not missed, the greatest impediment to energy efficiency is legislators.
Framing is easy; the robots are pathetic (Score:2)
Giant 3D printers are what nearly every construction bot is so far. If you want a wasp nest then the 3D printer might beat humans at that task someday soon. The cheap simple stick framed houses in the USA have multiple kinds and techniques but they all go up pretty quickly and cheaply. The REAL labor is everything else!
Where robots are making a difference is factory built COMPONENTS that can be dropped into those frames. Windows manufacturing for example; it's pretty automated and can do more. Trusses a
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Put the parts on a truck and have local experts put it together.
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It is dumb to be pooping out concrete when you could reasonably build a machine to do courses of earth bags instead. It's just dirt in burlap sacks, or you can get the material as a continuous tube. Barbed wire is normally used between the layers to provide tensile strength, but you could use something else. You can spray it with clay when you're done. Eco friendly, super strong.
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Unfortunately a lot of these innovative building techniques are held back but banks being unwilling to invest in them. If you want to get a mortgage and the bank survey comes back with "unconventional construction" on it, you may find it very difficult to borrow the money.
conflation nonsense (Score:3)
talking about construction (skyscrapers, roads, bridges, commercial buildings, dams, etc.) and then suddenly making the jump to "houses" as being any significant thing to worry about is silly
LEGO (Score:2)
What we need is the construction equivalent of LEGO bricks - modular sections that are made to regular sizes, that are easy to fit together.
Even the "modular" houses are basically just custom buildings that are built somewhere else and stuck together on site.
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If you think that, then you know absolutely nothing about how brick construction works.
Inconsistent width, inconsistent height, and it takes a pretty skilled worker to get a wall straight and level.
In the time it takes to even lay out the bottom row of a brick wall, you'd have most of a house done with modular construction.
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What we need is the construction equivalent of LEGO bricks - modular sections that are made to regular sizes, that are easy to fit together.
There are lots of prefab and even modular construction schemes, but most of them are more expensive than building locally, and the remainder produce inferior results in one or more ways. You're never ever going to get something like that which is as strong as on-site construction and also saves money, and it has to be cheaper to be accepted.
For small buildings, it can be cheaper to build the whole thing somewhere else, and for smallish ones you can build them in sections. But assembling a building like it's
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Prefabricated homes are generally not that generic because although they are mass producing some parts they are still putting in custom windows, doors, and siding, etc... no one wants a cookie cutter home. Whoever they have framing wall panels is probably still bored out of their skull.
Wait a minute (Score:5, Informative)
From the actual report:
Buildings and construction together account for 36% of global final energy use and 39% of energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions when upstream power generation is included.
I looked this up because 40% seemed ridiculously high for the construction sector alone. And in fact, that number is completely misrepresenting the facts. According to the report linked, the construction industry consumes 6% of energy, and emits 11% of CO2. The majority of the report focuses on making the buildings themselves sustainable. This makes far more sense to me, as construction is a mostly ONE TIME cost, given that most buildings last many decades before needing complete replacement.
I'm not dismissing the importance of making buildings more energy efficient, and even looking into ways of making construction more efficient, but let's at least start with proper facts up front.
But is it cheaper? (Score:3)
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Someone mod this up funny!
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"Yo baby, why don't you come on over and let me put some dirt in your bucket?"
That is one ugly house/How about more Traditional? (Score:2)
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder but I didn't see any part of that house that I found attractive. To my eye, it looks like a modern office building with weird (I'm talking about the ceiling) architectural features. When I looked at it, I felt like it would have been better suited to overlooking water than just being in a concrete commercial area.
If they want to get people excited, how about coming up with something that looks more traditional but has these types of savings? Something like the
dickheads in offices (Score:2)
Have you ever seen or actually worked on a construction site ???
Fecking ijots in office blocks with their heads firmly stuck up their fundamentals.
It would be much easier to replace these far-sighted ijots with computers and put the ijots up against a wall.
And while I'm on a rant it is also easier to replace accountants and managers with computers rather that people who actually do something creative and constructive.
The ground is uneven, muddy, sandy, rocky, there are obstacles everywhere, all manner of di
3D printing homes != energy efficiency (Score:2)
1) Good insulation, 10 to 15 cm of closed cell foam or glass or mineral wool, combined with insulating structural materials such as porous ceramic or autoclaved concrete.
2) Double or triple glazed windows with sealed panes.
3) Recuperating ventilation systems - the air exhausted from the house preheats or precools the intake air reducing the load on heating and air co
A *horse* built by robots (Score:2)
I should get new glasses.
...WHEN? (Score:2)
Is Winsun really legit? (Score:1)