With some help from robots

Architects and designers have used a robot to construct a 130-sq metre building in Rotterdam. Built inside a former industrial machine hall, the group called Studio RAP described the structure as “the first robotically fabricated building in the Netherlands.” The building is the SkilledIn Office, where it provides an office and training area for technology students and entrepreneurs.

The studio sees a lot of potential in embracing digital fabrication and strives for a direct link between the unlimited possibilities of the digital world and the material world through robotic fabrication. Their aim is to take this out of the academic world, where a lot of developments have been initiated, and apply it to building practice. Still, there is an enormous chasm between the digital design and the production and assembly of the building, and they are determined to bridge this gap.

According to the designers – Wessel van Beerendonk, Leon Spikke and Lucas ter Hall, 3D modelling plug-in was used to develop the structure. Made up of 225 MetsaWood panels, each was directly milled from custom fabrication software before being assembled into a structure.

To ensure that the roof spanning over eight metres holds up, joints and screws hold each piece together with the perimeter pieces slotted into glass walls. It was, according to their website, “the first project in which we show the scalability of industrial robotic fabrication
towards an architectural scale.”

Wessel explains that the unique shape of the vault is distilled out of digital form-finding methods. This optimisation results in a compression-only roof structure. The vault rises up in a spectacular way from a central column that gradually blends into the roof construction in one smooth motion.