The higher the global population, the higher the standard of living, and the higher the demand for housing, infrastructure, and other essential goods. Humans and machines will have to operate together to meet the building requirements of the future through automation. Generative design and automation can help improve the sustainability of the construction industry by reducing waste and saving time.
Researchers from the Block Research Group at ETH Zurich were able to calculate and build a freestanding shell structure. Using the minimum material required, we obtained a fragile and winding concrete roofing system with an average thickness of only 5 centimetres. Another group that stands out in this area is the ICD University of Stuttgart, with many kinds of research and constructions that point to the increasing influence of robotics architecture. This can be seen in their latest project, the Fiber House, presented this year at the Venice Architecture Biennial.
The Reimagination | Future of Automation
With the growth of the population and the growth of the middle class, the increasing effects of climate change, the decline of natural resources, and a shortage of skilled workers. That’s a tremendously creative and logistical challenge. But as the design challenges go, this is the most significant opportunity developers, and manufacturers have ever had.
This new automation model is an opportunity to do better with less inequity, disruption for businesses, and less damage to global communities and the environment.
It’s about new construction and manufacturing processes with less waste of time and better outcomes. This also helps in giving workers more attractive and better opportunities.
Automation and artificial intelligence, for the moment, would not replace architects, but this does not mean that the discipline is not undergoing significant changes in its practice, such as:
Computers and software eliminate time-consuming and repetitive tasks, optimizing the production of technical equipment and making it possible, among other things, to atomize the size of architectural offices. Each time it takes fewer architects to build more complex projects.
Architecture and changing communities
Automation is changing the way people work and the way people live. GM can create lighter, less energy-intensive cars to fight climate change. Van Wijnen is capable of constructing more sustainable and affordable housing. And Build Change makes it possible to build more resilient houses more quickly.
Automation also helps businesses stay ahead of their competitors, but most importantly, it encourages and sustains the imagination that advances humanity. Better cities, better buildings, better stuff, better results:
Reinventing the automation model can balance the extra inevitability with the minus reality while realizing better opportunities.
Generative Aid Design | Future of Automation
The evolution of General Motors (GM) is an example of this new automated approach. The manufacturer has been an automation pioneer since the first car came out of one of its factories. In some GM plants, a new car comes out of the assembly line every minute, resulting in a complex industrial symphony requiring more than 30,000 perfectly designed parts.
One of the first notable instances of “building automation” was in the 1880s, when an American professor devised a thermostat to control temperatures in his school classroom. The thermostat concept dated to the 1620s when a Dutch inventor developed a device to moderate temperatures in an egg incubator.
Automation has slowly made its way into architecture and construction; this collaboration can lead to new strategies and contribute to revisiting vernacular solutions to enhance the built environment. We see a new era of architecture, where absolute precision becomes the standard, allowing us to construct almost anything we can imagine effectively.
Considering the present and future, we focus on the impact of design automation tools in the process. The most significant process improvement is reducing the time it takes to complete the design process. Automation tools now make the iterations that have been created manually. Therefore, the result is not just faster but also more accurate.
Digital manufacturing includes manufacturing from robot-based methods of additives and subtractions. In architecture, automation typically relies on machine learning and generative design. As tools for rethinking creative processes and the built environment, digital manufacturing and automation provide companies with opportunities to overcome traditional workflows. By mobilizing new systems and processes, the following developers highlight the impact of digital manufacturing and automation.
New building methods are going to change the architecture. They can also respond to various conditions, from skills shortages to sustainability. Exploring these manufacturing ideas and approaches in greater depth, teams such as students and professors from ETH Zurich are studying additive and subtractive manufacturing.
References:
- https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/enterprise-networks/what-is-building-automation.html#~q-a
- https://www.redhat.com/architect/automation-architecture
- https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/course/automation-in-practice-building-the-future-of-architectures-engineering-and-construction-spring-2022/
- www.archdaily.com/885987/will-automation-affect-architects/
- https://www.businessinsider.com/sc/smart-buildings-are-our-future-2017-5?IR=T
