ETH ZÜRICH

FAST FORM/WORK

Casting a sustainable future

Fast Form/Work:
Casting a sustainable future

Summer 2019, we at ETH Department of Architecture had an interesting and intense 3 week collaboration with students from Columbia University GSAPP, Baier Bischofberger Architects and Trevor Watson from Play Test Make.

I was one of the lecturers. Together with my group we experimented to upscale a brandnew material from laboratory to buildingsite.

Find more information about the material at the ETH spin-off  FenX website.

We gathered lots of information about the material properties.

The new material consisted of a non toxic, sustainable flyash mixture that was foamed.

The foam then was cast and dried to get its final properties. Fully dried it was almost as strong as concrete but super lightweight.

We were 4 teams working with different approaches. 

My team worked with simple cardboard formwork.

One team 3D printed an exoskeleton that was filled with the foam.

Another team worked on vacuumformed forms.

The 3D robotic team worked with a robot arm, printing the foam directly.