When Digital Fabrication Provides Environmental Benefits: Study of Complex Structures
The construction sector is the responsible of significant environmental impacts worldwide,such as 40%of natural resources consumption and 40%of total waste generation.Consequently,a change in design and construction is needed to improve sustainability aspects in construction.Digital fabrication represents a feasible solution for the low levels of innovation,efficiency and sustainability present in the sector.Initial sustainability assessments of 3D printing have clearly revealed the potential of digital technologies to achieve environmental benefits compared to conventional processes.However,digital fabrication in architecture presents new formal,technological and material challenges where further demands must be met.Advances in computer-aided design and robotic additive fabrication challenge architects to design and construct non-standardised complex building structures.Nevertheless,complexity has been often considered a negative factor in sustainable construction,responsible of an increase of material,labour and waste in the projects.This paper investigates the environmental potential of digital fabrication methods applied to complex concrete structures.Furthermore,this research studies how formal and structural complexity in architecture influences the environmental performance of a project.With this objective,the Life Cycle Assessment(LCA)method was used for the evaluation of an innovative robotic construction process applied to a wall structure and its comparison with a conventional element with the same function.The results of the assessment demonstrated that digital fabrication becomes a feasible construction technique for non-standard complex structures.In the case study evaluated,digital fabrication provided environmental benefits compared to conventional techniques for the construction of complex structures.
life-cycle assessment digital fabrication complexity
Isolda AGUSTí-JUAN Guillaume HABERT
Chair of Sustainable Construction,ETH Zürich,Switzerland
国际会议
2017世界可持续建筑环境大会(the World Sustainable Built Environment Conference)
香港
英文
2141-2146
2017-06-05（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）