ETH Zürich   Switzerland   Rising almost 30 meters, Tor Alva is the tallest 3D-printed tower in the world. Built by Nova Fundazium Origen with ETH Zurich, it aimed to revitalize Mulegns (Switzerland), a small Alpine village with only eleven inhabitants at present. Tor Alva (Wh

Zaha Hadid Architects Block Research Group   Italy   El prototipo de pasarela se construye con piezas de hormigón impreso en 3D sin armar, lo que asemeja su comportamiento a las estructuras tradicionales de piedra, resolviendo los esfuerzos a través de la geometría y no con la acumulación de materiales

Archi-Union Architects Fab-Union   China   The pavilion is planned as a recognizable gate to the park. Its complex geometry is the result of the calculation and adapts to the flow of visitors and activities nearby, while the color palette is a metaphor of the different programs offered by the

allmannwappner Menges Scheffler Architekten   Germany   The teaching, research and innovation centre for specialised technologies in the textile industry, known as Texoversum, is part of the campus extension of the Reutlingen University of Applied Sciences. The textile construction is the theme of the des

IAAC   Spain   The Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and the Italian company WASP (World’s Advanced Saving Project), which specializes in 3D printers, present TOVA, a prototype built with earth and a Crane WASP over a period of seven weeks on t

University of Stuttgart   Germany   The bioinspired pavilion shows how processes that account for geometrical, productional, structural, environmental, and aesthetic requirements, along with robotic fabrication techniques applied to natural materials, generate works that are both ecolo

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   United States   Lennar, the homebuilding giant, and Icon, wose specialty is large-scale 3D printing, have together announced that a project for a hundred single-familiy houses in Austin, Texas, designed in collaboration with BIG, the firm of the Danish architect Bja

Mario Cucinella Architects   Italy   A fruit of the collaboration between Mario Cucinella Arquitectos – based in Bologna and New York – and WASP (World’s Advanced Saving Project), the Italian company specialized in 3D printing, this circular housing prototype made of soil is located in

Carl Fredrik Svenstedt Architect   France   The main undulating wall, of 7x 80m, is built with blocks of local sandstone carved by a robot, post-tensioned to the foundations and bonded horizontally using stainless steel cables. The blocks are mounted traditionally by a team of stonemasons...

MAA   South Korea   The Istanbul firm MAA, headed by the architect Melike Altinisik, has unveiled its competition-winning design for the Robot Science Museum in the Chang-dong neighborhood of the South Korean capital. Saving time and money, robots will build the curvin

Menges y Knippers   Germany   El diseño computacional y la construcción robotizada se han combinado para generar un pabellón modular de madera, cuya forma se inspira en la de los organismos marinos.

Menges y Knippers   Germany   Diseñada a partir de criterios de Diseño Computacional, la piel del pabellón está formada por escamas de madera contrachapada de 6,5 milímetros de espesor, fabricadas por un robot y ensambladas para optimizar su comportamiento estructural, formando u

AV Proyectos joined the AV/Arquitectura Viva family twenty years ago. To mark the occasion, it is presented now with updated graphics and an approach adapted to the reality of architects, with more articles and works and a greater emphasis on constru

Eduardo Prieto   The word ‘robot’ evokes certain 20th-century obsessions. For a start, it brings to mind the servile figures if those roboti through which Karel Capek lent weight to the myth, and which found their most amiable expression in the pair of androids of th

Atlas’s advanced control system enables highly diverse and agile locomotion, while algorithms reason through complex dynamic interactions involving the whole body and environment to plan movements. Atlas uses 3D printed parts to give it the strength-

The Dutch artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta founded DRIFT in 2007. It is a studio that specializes in aerial installations, with a multi-disciplinary team working on experiential artistic creations. In collaboration with the companies Drone Sto

Icon 3d prints the first simulated Mars surface habitat for NASA, designed by Big-Bjarke Ingels Group. Mars Dune Alpha, the 3D-printed habitat located at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, will aid in long-duration science missions. ICON, deve

BBC   China's Zhurong rover has sent back a batch of new images from Mars - including a "selfie". The robot, which landed in May, positioned a wireless camera on the ground and then rolled back a short distance to take the snap. To Zhurong's right is the r

Foster + Partners   As part of Boston Dynamics’ Early Adopter Program, Foster + Partners has been exploring the use of Spot®, the agile robot that climbs stairs and traverses rough terrain with ease as a tool to capture and monitor progression on-site. The practice’s Ap

Business Insider   Edgar Su   Far from barking its orders, a robot dog enlisted by Singapore authorities to help curb coronavirus infections in the city-state politely asks joggers and cyclists to stay apart...

There is no doubt whatsoever that robotization and artificial intelligence are proof of great technological progress, but as sociologists and economists keep warning us, they are also a serious threat to the survival of many jobs. Architects, for the

The combination of biomimetics, computer design, and robotic construction continues to bear fruit, waiting for the moment that it becomes a more or less feasible model to apply in everyday architecture. This is demonstrated by the two pavilions that

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Robots have been with us for a long time, but only now are they perceived as a planetary threat. The fascination with automata, from Hero to Al-Jazari or from the mannerist devices to the Vaucanson duck, has evolved parallel to its unsettling side, w

The paranoia that the digital revolution has begun to spark has its counterpoint in the blind optimism that associates good with progress and progress with the machine. Expressions of this optimism are competitions like the one held for the design of

The Economist   Jet packs for satellites. According to Daniel Campbell of Effective Space, the British and Israeli firm which is building them, that is the way to think of the robotic spacecraft his company plans to start launching in 2020. The purpose of Effective

CNN   Meeting the country's construction demands has come at the expense of architectural identity, according to Philip Yuan, founder of the firm Archi-Union Architects. "It's a kind of copy and paste process," Yuan says of the repetitive, nondescript

Josean Ruiz Esquíroz   Fritz Kahn was a gynecologist who became a spreader of medical knowledge, and was instrumental in the birth of science illustration. Sappol defines modernity as the advance from logocentrism to an age where image is the main tool of learning. Body Mo

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The transformation of human bodies by artificial means has a long history behind it, but recent technological development has given it a new dimension. From the lotus feet of young Chinese girls, obtained by binding, or the giraffe necks of African w

Jan Willmann   Vinculada antaño a la construcción artesanal, la madera es hoy el material preferido para experimentar con los nuevos métodos de diseño y fabricación robotizada.

Michael Sappol   Fritz Kahn, Scientific Illustration and the Homuncular Subject

Daniel Susskind Richard Susskind   Cómo la tecnología transformará el trabajo de los expertos humanos

Ricardo Iglesias   La tecnología como experimentación estética

Fabio Gramazio Matthias Kohler   How Robots Change Architecture