Every year, faculty and students at the University of Stuttgart design and build pavilions that push the boundaries of conventional understanding of architecture and building technology, with a key theme of their experiments - the combination of biomimetics and robotics. We have already published their buildings in the past (you can read more about them here and here). This time, the plywood pavilion, which was built by professors and students, looks like the shell of a sea urchin. The project aims to showcase the potential of computational design and modeling, as well as digital workflow in architecture. The project was carried out by a multidisciplinary team of architects, engineers, biologists and paleontologists. The research process was led by Achim Menges of the Institute for Computational Design (ICD) and Jan Knippers, head of the Institute for Building Construction and Structural Design (ITKE).
As in previous years, a large scope of work was carried out by a robot: first, an intelligent machine made templates from laminated plywood (beech served as the material), then bent and formed volumetric segments from them - 151 pieces were obtained. And then she sewed the hollow blocks together using an industrial sewing machine. The result is a vaulted structure with an area of 85 m2 and dimensions 11.5 x 9.5 meters. The pavilion weighs 780 kg.
“The resulting design shows how the synthesis of biological principles and the complex work with material, shape and robotic production can open up completely new methods of wooden construction,” the team at the University of Stuttgart explains the significance of their invention.
