How a built environment that is robotic and interactive becomes an apt home to our restless, dynamic, and increasingly digital society. The relationship of humans to computers can no longer be represented as one person in a chair and one computer on a desk. Today computing finds its way into our pockets, our cars, our appliances; it is ubiquitous—an inescapable part of our everyday lives. Computing is even expanding beyond our devices; sensors, microcontrollers, and actuators are increasingly embedded into the built environment. In Architectural Robotics, Keith Evan Green looks toward the next frontier in computing: interactive, partly intelligent, meticulously designed physical environments. Green examines how these “architectural robotic” systems will support and augment us at work, school, and home, as we roam, interconnect, and age. Green tells the stories of three projects from his research lab that exemplify the reconfigurable, distributed, and transfigurable environments of architectural robotics. The Animated Work Environment is a robotic work environment of shape-shifting physical space that responds dynamically to the working life of the people within it; home+ is a suite of networked, distributed “robotic furnishings” integrated into existing domestic and healthcare environments; and LIT ROOM offers a simulated environment in which the physical space of a room merges with the imaginary space of a book, becoming “a portal to elsewhere.” How far beyond workstations, furniture, and rooms can the environments of architectural robotics stretch? Green imagines scaled-up neighborhoods, villages, and metropolises composed of physical bits, digital bytes, living things, and their hybrids. Not global but local, architectural robotics grounds computing in a capacious cyber-physical home.

The past decade's surge towards more computationally defined building systems and highly adaptable open-source design software has left the field ripe for the integration of robotics whether through large-scale building fabrication or through more intelligent/adaptive building systems. Through this surge, architecture has not only been greatly influenced by these emerging technologies, but has also begun influencing other disciplines in unexpected ways. The purpose of this book is to provide systems of classification, categorisation, and taxonomies of robotics in architecture so that a more systematic and holistic body of work could take place while addressing the multifarious aspects of possible research and production.

How a built environment that is robotic and interactive becomes an apt home to our restless, dynamic, and increasingly digital society. The relationship of humans to computers can no longer be represented as one person in a chair and one computer on a desk. Today computing finds its way into our pockets, our cars, our appliances; it is ubiquitous—an inescapable part of our everyday lives. Computing is even expanding beyond our devices; sensors, microcontrollers, and actuators are increasingly embedded into the built environment. In Architectural Robotics, Keith Evan Green looks toward the next frontier in computing: interactive, partly intelligent, meticulously designed physical environments. Green examines how these “architectural robotic” systems will support and augment us at work, school, and home, as we roam, interconnect, and age. Green tells the stories of three projects from his research lab that exemplify the reconfigurable, distributed, and transfigurable environments of architectural robotics. The Animated Work Environment is a robotic work environment of shape-shifting physical space that responds dynamically to the working life of the people within it; home+ is a suite of networked, distributed “robotic furnishings” integrated into existing domestic and healthcare environments; and LIT ROOM offers a simulated environment in which the physical space of a room merges with the imaginary space of a book, becoming “a portal to elsewhere.” How far beyond workstations, furniture, and rooms can the environments of architectural robotics stretch? Green imagines scaled-up neighborhoods, villages, and metropolises composed of physical bits, digital bytes, living things, and their hybrids. Not global but local, architectural robotics grounds computing in a capacious cyber-physical home.

A photographic survey of the robotic face of Tokyo buildings and an argument that robot aesthetics plays a central role in architectural history. In Tokyoids, architect François Blanciak surveys the robotic faces omnipresent in Tokyo buildings, offering an architectural taxonomy based not on the usual variables—size, material, historical style—but on the observable expressions of buildings. Are the eyes (windows) twinkling, the mouth (door) laughing? Is that balcony a howl of distress? Investigating robot aesthetics through his photographs of fifty buildings, Blanciak argues that the robot face originated in architecture—before the birth of robotics—and has played a central role in architectural history. Blanciak first puts the robot face into historical perspective, examining the importance of the face in architectural theory and demonstrating that the construction of architecture’s emblematic portraits triggered the emergence of a robot aesthetics. He then explores the emotions conveyed by the photographed buildings’ robot faces, in chapters titled “Awe,” “Wrath,” “Mirth,” “Pain,” “Angst,” and “Hunger.” As he does so he considers, among other things, the architectural relevance of Tokyo’s ordinary buildings; the repression of the figural in contemporary architecture; an aesthetic of dismemberment, linked to the structure of the Japanese language and local building design; and the influence of automation technology upon human interaction. Part photographic survey, part theoretical inquiry, Tokyoids upends the usual approach to robotics in architecture by considering not the automation of architectural output but the aesthetic properties of the robot.

The first volume of the Adaptive Environments series focuses on Robotic Building, which refers to both physically built robotic environments and robotically supported building processes. Physically built robotic environments consist of reconfigurable, adaptive systems incorporating sensor-actuator mechanisms that enable buildings to interact with their users and surroundings in real-time. These require Design-to-Production and Operation chains that are numerically controlled and (partially or completely) robotically driven. From architectured materials, on- and off-site robotic production to robotic building operation augmenting everyday life, the volume examines achievements of the last decades and outlines potential future developments in Robotic Building. This book offers an overview of the developments within robotics in architecture so far, and explains the future possibilities of this field. The study of interactions between human and non-human agents at building, design, production and operation level will interest readers seeking information on architecture, design-to-robotic-production and design-to-robotic-operation.

Although highly ambitious and sophisticated, most attempts at using robotic processes in architecture remain the exception; little more than prototypes or even failures at a larger scale. This is because the general approach is either to automate existing manual processes or the complete construction process. However, the real potential of robots remains unexploited if used merely for the execution of highly repetitive mass-fabrication processes: their capability for serial production of non-standard elements as well as for varied construction processes is mostly wasted. In order to scale up and advance the application of robotics, for both prefabrication and on-site construction, there needs to be an understanding of the different capabilities, and these should be considered right from the start of the design and planning process. This issue of AD showcases the findings of the Architecture and Digital Fabrication research module at the ETH Zurich Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, directed by Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler, which explores the possibilities of robotic construction processes for architecture and their large-scale application to the design and construction of high-rise buildings. Together with other contributors, they also look at the far-reaching transformations starting to occur within automated fabrication: in terms of liberation of labour, entrepreneurship, the changing shape of building sites, in-situ fabrication and, most significantly, design. Contributors: Thomas Bock, Jelle Feringa, Philippe Morel, Neri Oxman, Antoine Picon and François Roche. ETH Zurich contributors: Michael Budig, Norman Hack, Willi Lauer and Jason Lim and Raffael Petrovic (Future Cities Laboratory), Volker Helm, Silke Langenberg and Jan Willmann. Featured entrepreneurs: Greyshed, Machineous, Odico Formwork Robotics, RoboFold and ROB Technologies.

This volume collects about 20 contributions on the topic of robotic construction methods. It is a proceedings volume of the robarch2012 symposium and workshop, which will take place in December 2012 in Vienna. Contributions will explore the current status quo in industry, science and practitioners. The symposium will be held as a biennial event. This book is to be the first of the series, comprising the current status of robotics in architecture, art and design.

The first book on the use of robotic technology in landscape design that introduces new, dynamic methods and previously inconceivable scenarios for implementation. The Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich has been researching the integration of robots into the architectural practice, both in design and the fabrication process, for some time. This book--created in collaboration with the chair of Christophe Girot, Gramazio Kohler Research, and Marco Hutter at ETH Zurich's Robotic Systems Lab--is the first to investigate the use of robot-based construction equipment for large-scale soil grading in landscape architecture. As landscapes evolve due to ever-changing environmental conditions, the application of autonomous systems that respond to the environment rather than perform predefined and static earthwork is of particular interest in this field. Robotic Landscapes sheds light on a series of groundbreaking experiments in an interdisciplinary collaboration of landscape design, environmental engineering, and robotics that aims to make landscape architecture sustainable and ecological in the long term.

This book highlights the concept of informed architecture as an alternative to performance-based approaches. Starting with an analysis of the state of art, the book defines an operative methodology in which performative parameters lead to the generation of the shape becoming the design’s input, rather than being mere quantitative parameters. It then uses case studies to investigate the methodology. Lastly, the book discusses a novel way of conceiving and using the manufacturing tool, which is the basis for the definition of informed architectures in relation to data usage and the optimization process.

Recent technological developments in biology, computation, cybernetics, engineering, industrial design, materials, and robotics allow architecture to evolve beyond static functionality and become an active participant—with the capacity to perceive, react to, and connect—with humans and the natural world. The first process-based guide by Michael Fox and Miles Kemp introduced interactive architecture in 2009, and the past few years have seen its prototypical potential unleashed, manifest in the eighteen inventive projects featured in this follow-up, the latest in our Architecture Briefs series. Interactive Architecture: Adaptive World illustrates how structures can process information, make observations, and utilize tools to translate natural systems and create seamlessly integrated environments, from data-driven light installations, responsive sculptures, and performative materials, to smart highways, dynamic spaces, kinetic facades, and adaptive buildings. Ambitious projects from around the world, including Abu Dhabi, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Sochi, and Zurich, are illuminated by photographs, diagrams, and renderings.