This paper presents a formwork system consisting of a bending-active gridshell that simultaneously serves as falsework and integrated reinforcement for realising a ribbed funicular concrete skeleton shell. Encased by a knitted textile shuttering, the formwork system was demonstrated through KnitNervi, an architectural-scale, funnel-shaped demonstrator measuring 9 m in diameter and 3.3 m in height. The gridshell is materialised from straight steel rebar actively bent into curvilinear, double-layered rebar cages. Regular stirrups and pairs of inclined stirrups forming triangulated shear connectors provide the necessary shape control and stiffness for the load-bearing falsework.The rebar cages define the shape of the concrete ribs by supporting a knitted closed sectional mould and stay in place to structurally reinforce the resulting ribs. The focus of this paper lies on the falsework and reinforcement system with its interrelated design drivers. The geometric design includes the funicular form finding of the target shell with Thrust Network Analysis and the incremental form finding of the bending-active gridshell with its informed assembly sequence towards the funicular target with Finite Element Analysis. The engineering of the falsework demonstrates its sufficient loadbearing capacity and deflection control to support the weight of the wet concrete at an architectural scale. Sensitivity studies reveal the effectiveness of activating the double layer through the shear-connecting stirrups, the relevance of the internal connection design, and the geometric integrity during a potential stepwise casting sequence. The construction of the demonstrator verified the shape control and fabrication design. In only 36 h, the bespoke falsework gridshell was efficiently assembled from its kit-of-parts of standard rebar elements with adequate precision, logistics, time, and material resources. It was relatively lightweight, compact for transport, and employed low-tech construction techniques common to the rebar industry.Its structural geometry and informed bending-active logic enabled its efficient construction without digital fabrication or wasteful, costly moulds, which typically present the bottleneck for custom concrete structures. The resulting funicular concrete skeleton shell saves structural mass, hence embodied carbon, compared to unarticulated bending-dominant typologies. The overarching motivation of the research is to outline a strategy that could mitigate the environmental impact of the construction sector, applicable to a broad range of technological contexts.

Facing the challenges of our environmental crisis, the AEC sector must significantly lower its carbon footprint and use of first-use resources. A specific target is the reduction of the amount of concrete used. Funicular structures that base their strength on their structurally-informed geometry allow for material efficiency. However, a bottleneck for their construction lies in their costly and wasteful formworks and complex reinforcement placement. This research presents an alternative flexible formwork system consisting of a bending-active gridshell falsework and fabric shuttering for ribbed funicular concrete shells. The falsework becomes structurally integrated as reinforcement and is designed as two connected layers offering shape control and sufficient stiffness to support the wet-concrete load. The paper focuses on the development of a design-to-fabrication workflow and a graph-based data structure for gridshell falsework and reinforcement in the computational framework COMPAS. The implementation utilises, customises and creates packages for the form finding of the ribbed shell with TNA and the gridshell with FEA. The research is based on a demonstrator realised in the context of the Technoscape exhibition at the Maxxi Museum in Rome, Italy. The computational workflow was used to design this system and translate it for materialisation. The demonstrator serves as proof-of-concept for the novel material-efficient construction system. Its key to efficiency lies in the structurally-informed geometry for both the formwork and the resulting ribbed concrete shell.

Novel fabrication methods are necessary to capitalize on the high strength-to-weight ratio of composites engineered for construction applications. This paper presents prefabrication strategies for geometrically-complex building elements wound out of Glass and Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (G/CFRP). The research focuses on Robotic Coreless Filament Winding (RCFW), a technology that eliminates formwork, proposing upscaling and industrialization strategies combined with updated robot programming and control methods. Our application addresses the prefabrication of hyperboloid, tubular components with differentiated geometry and fiber layout. We examine how the proposed methods enabled the industrial prefabrication of a building-scale G/CFRP dome structure and discuss the industrial process relative to key fabrication parameters. Highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of the research, we envisage future directions and applications for RCFW in construction. Overall, we find that synergy between academia and industry is essential to meeting research, productivity, and certification goals in the rather conservative building industry.

Digitization and automation are essential tools to increase productivity and close significant added-value deficits in the building industry. Additive manufacturing (AM) is a process that promises to impact all aspects of building construction profoundly. Of special interest in AM is an in-depth understanding of material systems based on their isotropic or anisotropic properties. The presented research focuses on fiber-reinforced polymers, with anisotropic mechanical properties ideally suited for AM applications that include tailored structural reinforcement. This article presents a cyber-physical manufacturing process that enhances existing robotic coreless Filament Winding (FW) methods for glass and carbon fiber-reinforced polymers. Our main contribution is the complete characterization of a feedback-based, sensor-informed application for process monitoring and fabrication data acquisition and analysis. The proposed AM method is verified through the fabrication of a large-scale demonstrator. The main finding is that implementing AM in construction through cyber-physical robotic coreless FW leads to more autonomous prefabrication processes and unlocks upscaling potential. Overall, we conclude that material-system-aware communication and control are essential for the efficient automation and design of fiber-reinforced polymers in future construction.

The manufacturing process of robotic coreless filament winding has great potential for efficient material usage and automation for long-span lightweight construction applications. Design methods and quality control rely on an adequate digital representation of the fabrication parameters. The most influencing parameters are related to the resin impregnation of the fibers and the applied fiber tension during winding. The end-effector developed in this study allows efficient resin impregnation, which is controlled online by monitoring the induced fiber tension. The textile equipment was fully integrated into an upscaled nine-axis robotic winding setup. The cyber-physical fabrication method was verified with an application-oriented large-scale proof-of-concept demonstrator. From the subsequent analysis of the obtained datasets, a characteristic pattern in the winding process parameters was identified.

The aim of this research is to showcase processes and methodologies for the design and development of long-span, core-less wound structural building elements for architectural applications. Departing from established, iterative design methods and a linear digital toolchain, integrative design strategies incorporate parameters like material and fabrication constraints, structural performance and architectural design from the very beginning, establishing feedback loops. This approach seems particularly promising with the architectural application of high performance, long-span fibre components in mind, given their vast range of different and often antagonistic requirements. Building upon previous research in the realm of fibre composites conducted at the Institute for Computational Design (ICD), novel strategies and methods for the design and development of long-span fibre composite components are discussed, based on the 2019 BUGA fibre pavilion, a full scale glass and carbon fibre structure developed for the Bundesgartenschau - a garden fair in Heilbronn, Germany.

Building technologies employed today in 2nd and 3rd world countries are imported, expensive, outdated and unsustainable. Highly developed countries, on the other hand, rapidly advance in developing affordable, numerically controlled and robotically supported material- and energy-efficient methods for building on demand. The research team proposes to close this gap by applying advanced design-to-robotic-production (D2RP) technologies developed at Technical University Delft (TUD) to construction problems in 2nd and 3rd world countries. The provided tool base uses refurbished robotic technology, which is retrofitted with state-ofthe-art open source control software, and by employing local approaches and available materials the dependency on imported materials and processes is drastically reduced. The D2RP unit is coupled with the electricity generating Kite Power (KP) system developed at TUD to create a mobile sustainable autarkic unit that can be deployed everywhere.

Design to Robotic Production (D2RP) establishes links between digital design and production in order to achieve informed materialization at an architectural scale. D2RP research is being discussed under the computation, automation and materialization themes, by reference to customizable digital design means, robotic fabrication setups and informed materialization strategies implemented by the Robotic Building group at Hyperbody, TU Delft.

This paper discusses the development of an informed Design-to-Robotic-Production (D2RP) system for additive manufacturing to achieve performative porosity in architecture at various scales. An extended series of experiments on materiality, fabrication and robotics were designed and carried out resulting in the production of a one-to-one scale prototype. In this context, design materiality has been approached from both digital and physical perspectives. At digital materiality level, a customized computational design framework is implemented for form finding of compression only structures combined with a material distribution optimization method. Moreover, the chained connection between parametric design model and robotic production setup has led to a systematic study of certain aspects of physicality that cannot be fully simulated in the digital medium, which then establish a feedback loop for underrating material behaviors and properties. As a result, the D2RP system proposes an alternative method of robotic material deposition to create an informed material architecture.

Robotically Driven Construction of Buildings (RDCB) is an exploration into design to production solutions for robotically driven construction of buildings initiated by the faculties of Civil Engineering and Architecture, TU Delft and Architecture, TU Eindhoven and implemented 2014 within the 3TU Lighthouse framework. The aim of was to involve the disciplines of architecture, robotics, materials science, and structural design in order to integrate knowledge from the individual disciplines and develop new numerically controlled manufacturing techniques and building-design optimisation methods for adding creative value to buildings in a cost-effective and sustainable way. RDCB builds up on expertise developed at Hyperbody with respect to applications of robotics in architecture and this paper presents the contribution of the Robotic Building team from Hyperbody, Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft to the RDCB project. The contribution is in line with Europe’s aim to improve material and energy efficiency of buildings and efficiency of construction processes. Robotically driven construction and customised building materials have the potential to realise this in a cost-effective way and at the same time reduce accidents and health hazards for workers in the building sector. In order to achieve this RDCB is distributing materials as needed and where needed. This requires exploration of a variety of techniques and implies working with customised materials and techniques while finding the best methods of applying materials in the logic of specific force flows or thermal dissipation patterns. RDCB advances multi- and trans-disciplinary knowledge in robotically driven construction by designing and engineering new building systems for the on-demand production of customisable building components (Bier, 2014). The main consideration is that in architecture and building construction the factory of the future employs building materials and components that can be on site robotically processed and assembled.