Architecture and Digital Fabrication

The Chair of Architecture and Digital Fabrication examines the effects of changing conditions in production on architecture. Particular interest is given to the interconnection of data and material and the resulting implications for architectural design. 

There are several courses which offer an introduction or focus on digital and robotic fabrication in architecture. The one-year full-time programme Master of Advanced Studies in Architecture and Digital Fabrication (external page MAS ETH DFAB) teaches fundamental methods and technologies of digital design and fabrication and their large-scale application in architecture and construction. The Elective Course departs from the work of Gramazio Kohler Research, the lectures and seminars establish a conceptual framework of the digital in architecture with special regard to digital and robotic fabrication. In the the Seminar Week, we offer short intensive one week workshops that focus on specific techniques from the field of digital fabrication. In the context of the Focus Work you can choose between a theoretical or methodical approach to digital fabrication.

The professorship makes its research accessible to a wide audience in numerous publications, lectures and exhibitions and pursues an intensive exchange with neighboring disciplines. Examples include projects such as Flight Assembled Architecture at the FRAC Center in Orléans (2012), Iridescence Print at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2015) and the Rock Print Pavilion in Winterthur (2018). In 2014, the first anthology of robot-based fabrication processes appeared with The Robotic Touch - How Robots Change Architecture (Park Book, Zurich).