iR Innovation in Robotic Fabrication

INNOVATION IN ROBOTIC FABRICATION

PROJECTS	CLOUDS OF VENICE RE.PETE PERISCOPE TOWER
AWARDS	2012 VENICE BIENALE [INTERNATIONAL] - 2023 AUSTRALIAN GOOD DESIGN AWARDS [NATIONAL] - 2023 DESIGNERS AUSTRALIA AWARD OF MERIT [NATIONAL] - 2023 BEST AWARDS NEW ZEALAND [INTERNATIONAL] - 2010 YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM [ INTERNATIONAL]

Innovation in Robotic Fabrication

New Material Practices and Technologies

iR

The Machine is the architect’s tool – whether [they] like it or not. Unless [they] master it, the Machine has mastered [them].

__Frank Lloyd Wright

For us, the design of the machine -or tool- is of equal importance to the design of the object. We suggest both artefacts exist within a critical and enabling ecology, each informing the other. This belief stems from a fundamental understanding that design tools define design and if designers are not obsessed with innovation on both sides of the design-make environment then the potential for innovation is significantly eroded.

The industrial robots that we employ have changed little from the ones that first appeared on car production lines in the late 1960s. What has changed is the manner in which the designer now engages with these machines. We are responsible for the design of the robot’s hands (i.e. end effectors) and also with the elaboration of instruction code that steers it. Critically, this code is generated using bespoke computational frameworks from within our CAD environments. A flattening of the protocols of making that enhances reciprocity.

Through our work, we have explored the use of robotics in construction in multiple ways:
> Large-scale 3D printing applications
> Stereotomy, or the complex water-jet cutting of masonry elements
> Hot-wire cutting of non-standard foam blocks and formwork bed-liners
> Multi-plane steel rod bending
> Multi-axis machining

Non-Planar Plastic Extrusion
System’s Reef 2.0 [2021]

The benefit of developing our own robotic control protocols is the ability to define and execute custom printing paths that are not bound to traditional slicing or contouring conventions. This allows us to fabricate more complex objects and junctions that allow for branching structures and connections.
In collaboration with BVN Architecture and UTS.

3D Robotic PETG Extrusion
M-Pavilion Re.Pete Chair [2022]

This in-house designed and made pellet extruder (i.e. end-effcetor) is mounted to an economical UR-10e cobot-style manipulator to create a micro-factory for the production of 60 chairs required for the 2022 M-Pavilion commission.

Robotic Sand Drawing
Uncharted Territory [2023]

The tools we make are not always highly sophisticated. Here, a simple spring-loaded drawing device (i.e. rubber-tipped stick) is mounted to a robot and dragged through a sandbox. The incredibly intricate artefacts (i.e. drawings) that result from this process benefit not only from their underlying computational patterns but also the sand’s consistent gestural qualities as the grains settle.

3D Robotic Hot-Wire Foam Cutting
Periscope Tower [2011]

Hot-wire foam cutting has long been a staple of the construciton and boat building industries. In deploying this techinque robotically, we are able to take advantage of the speed of this subtractive technique over other CNC-based approaches whilst also benfitting from the additonal degrees of freedom (i.e. motion planes) afforded by the robot to produce more complex forms.

Large-Scale Robotic 3D Printing of Insulation
2009

Robots are precise in timing as well as in position. Together this means that even materials that are extremely volatile such as polyurethane spray foam can be used in a contralled manner. In this case the extremely high-performing insulation material’s rapid curing is used as a medium for supportless large-scale 3D-
printing. Making insulation a form-giving element within architecture opens numerous additional possibilities for reducing the embodied-carbon of construction.