Talk Dennis Lagemann

Another approach to space – Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design

Date: Mar 11 2015, 12:00-13:00
Location: ETH Zürich Hönggerberg Campus (Science City)
Building HIL Room E 67.1 (Bloody Hell)

What if computation could do more than just deliver increasingly intriguing geometries? What if computation could offer us a look at the spaces that are conceivable but not yet imaginable: computed as pure information topologies. Metrical space, especially geometrical space could then be rendered into this relational framework. Life-Design of urban society has changed during the last decades. New media have entered our perception to a degree never imagined by future sciences of the past. So the question if space-time can still be considered as a single layer in reality arises in philosophy, physics... and Architecture? And for urban society? Individualization takes command. Being special becomes normality. Programs inhabit spatialities, people work and dwell and make company in short, due to increasing nomadism and fluctuation. Three protagonists are sent in for discussion. Alberti, who is deemed to have created the modern image of 'the Architect', Ledoux, who might best be described as a cultural engineer, preceded shape and transformation grammars and Habraken who reminds us that the ordinary may create spaces far more appropriated than any Architect will ever be able to invent. But in urban areas, where the life plans of many intersect but should not collide, where comfort should be provided on limited and affordable space, the question arises if these appropriations are still appropriate, whether stacking and adding single use areas in uniform grammars can still be the answer. Maybe the everyday use of space already does find answers Architecture did not yet take into account.

Talk Bratislav Svetozarevic

Adaptive, Occupant-Centred Control of a Soft Robotics Driven, Modular Solar Façade for Energy Efficient and Comfortable Buildings – Chair of Architecture and Building Systems

Date: Feb 25 2015, 12:00-13:00
Location: ETH Zürich Hönggerberg Campus (Science City)
Building HIL Room E 67.1 (Bloody Hell)

Buildings are not only one of the largest contributors to climate change, with 19% of global greenhouse gas emissions used for operations, but they also carry a large potential for climate change mitigation – with potential of 50-90% of energy savings in existing and new buildings, without reducing occupant comfort. A building element that strongly influences both building energy efficiency and occupant comfort is the building facade. An high-performance building envelope, a so called Adaptive Solar Façade, is being developed at the Chair of architecture and building systems. The Adaptive Solar Facade is a lightweight, automatically controlled, modular building shading system with integrated photovoltaics. Due to its modular structure, where every facade module is independently rotated using soft pneumatic actuators in 2 degrees of freedom (DOF), it offers a very fine regulation of energy flows from and into the climatized indoor environment, thus creating a potential for heating/cooling energy savings. On the other hand, the modular structure of the façade allows a fine modulation of daylighting levels, aw well as many ways to block or allow views, thus having a strong influence on occupants’ comfort. Furthermore, integrated photovoltaics provide an additional potential for improvement of the net energy balance of the building with the Adaptive Solar Façade. This project is a joint effort of several researchers at A/S. In this talk I will present my research proposal, which will elaborate on three innovations concerning the actuation and control of the Adaptive Solar Façade.

During this research, facade prototypes are going to be implemented in two real-world projects, serving as living labs: at the ETH House of Natural Resources (http://www.honr.ethz.ch/), at the ETH Hönggerberg Campus, and as a part of the NEST HiLo unit – an ultra-lightweight and super-integrated guesthouse at EMPA in Dübendorf (http://hilo.arch.ethz.ch/).

Talk Clayton Miller

Forensically Investigating Large Measured Building Performance Datasets – Chair of Architecture and Building Systems

Date: Jan 14 2015, 12:00-13:00
Location: ETH Zürich Hönggerberg Campus (Science City)
Building HIL Room E 67.1 (Bloody Hell)

The PhD work presented is embedded in the interdisciplinary research project Smart Dynamic Casting, a fabrication process aimed at eliminating the need for custom made formwork in the construction of complex concrete structures.

This presentation will describe a process applying a series of knowledge discovery filters to screen data quality, weather sensitivity, and temporal breakouts from large building performance datasets collected by building management and energy information systems (BMS/EIS). These filters are used to qualify the desirability for simulation model feedback from a forensic perspective.

Talk Ena Lloret Kristensen

Smart Dynamic Casting – Chair for Architecture and Digital Fabrication

Date: May 07 2014, 12:00-13:00
Location: ETH Zürich Hönggerberg Campus (Science City)
Building HIL Room E 67.1 (Bloody Hell)

The PhD work presented is embedded in the interdisciplinary research project Smart Dynamic Casting, a fabrication process aimed at eliminating the need for custom made formwork in the construction of complex concrete structures.

In SDC the concrete is formed during the delicate period when the concrete changes from a soft to a hard material. In this process a formwork with a particular cross section, significantly smaller than the structures produced, is attached to a 6-axis robotic arm, replacing the hydraulic jacks commonly used in slipforming. This construction process is informed by the physical properties of the material through a feedback system that measures the setting kinetics of the concrete during the robotic slipforming process. Enhanced robotic control allows the precise manipulation of speed and movement of the formwork in space, ultimately facilitating the formation of complex concrete structures without a custom made formwork.

Talk Kim Moon Keun

A Novel Ventilation Strategy with CO2 Capture Device and Energy Saving in Buildings – Chair of Building Systems

Date: March 12 2014, 12:00-13:00
Location: ETH Zürich Hoenggerberg Campus (Science City)
Building HIL Room E 67.1 (Bloody Hell)

This research discusses the performance of CO2 adsorption device and its utilization to save energy in buildings. This new device adsorbs CO2 and a small amount of moisture in the CO2 capture process, and it evaporates pure CO2 by thermal energy in the desorption process. This study shows the possibility of implementing a CO2 capture device in the operation of an air ventilation system for high performance air cooling and heating for buildings. This innovative strategy provides a means to recirculate indoor air to save energy for a certain period of time and the potential for an energy-efficient operation of buildings. This study presents the analysis of CO2 adsorption performance measurements and evaluates the application of the device by numerical calculations. The results of simulations for the tropical summer and Central European winter season show that 30-60 % of air ventilation cooling and heating energy can be saved competed to conventional systems. Based on these results, this study describes the possibility of using this system to recirculate indoor air using the CO2 capture device to save energy and minimize air cooling and heating loads. This novel strategy introduces a new paradigm of air ventilation and can replace conventional air ventilation systems for certain period of time.

Talk Norman Hack

Mesh – Mould – Chair of Architecture and Digital Fabrication

Date:February 26 2014, 12:00-13:00
Location: ETH Zürich Hoenggerberg Campus (Science City)
Building HIL Room E 67.1 (Bloody Hell)

The proposed research investigates a unification of the two most cost and labour intensive aspects of non-standard concrete constructions, the formwork and the reinforcement, into one single robotic fabrication process. A novel method for robotically fabricated formwork that simultaneously acts as reinforcement has been developed in a preliminary phase of the PhD research at the FCL in Singapore. This study opens up techniques and methodologies for the fabrication of structurally differentiated, spatially highly articulated and material efficient building structures.

Talk Li Li

Neural Wireless Sensor & Actuator Network for Smart Home – Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design

Date: January 22 2013, 12:00-13:00
Location: ETH Zürich Hoenggerberg Campus (Science City)
Building HIL Room E 67.1 (Bloody Hell)

There are many smart home demonstrators in research and industry. However, the adoption of smart homes in the market has remained slow over the last years. There are several reasons for that. First, most of the smart home systems in market work like a time or event triggered machine. In another word, they are not ‘smart’ enough. Secondly, they are not so easy to be installed into the existing houses. Thirdly, The high up‐front investment costs for the smart home system are also prohibitive.

To overcome these problems, we try to introduce Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Wireless Sensor and Actuator Network (WSAN) into the smart home system. ANN is a Machine learning technique, which is widely used in pattern classification, prediction, control and optimization. WSAN refers to a group of sensors and actuators linked by wireless medium to perform distributed sensing and acting tasks. ANN can give the smart home the ability to learn from the residents and make decisions and predictions based on the habits of the residents. WSAN can make the whole system more lightweight and adaptive to the house environment.

Talk Clayton Miller

Robust Exploratory Analysis for Actualized Building Performance – Assistant Chair of Architecture and Sustainable Building Technologies

Date: December 4 2013, 12:00-13:00
Location: ETH Zürich Hoenggerberg Campus (Science City)
Building HIL Room E 67.1 (Bloody Hell)

Architects and engineers focus heavily on the energy, environmental, and functional performance in the design of modern buildings. However, this effort has not proven to consistently correlate with actualized performance of operating buildings. This phenomenon is complicated by the growing amount of raw sensor data generated by modern building energy management and automation systems. Clayton will present a two-step method for investigating the operational performance of new and recently renovated commercial buildings. The goal is to reduce the expert intervention needed to utilize measured raw data in order to indicate efficiency and consumption patterns to diagnose poor system performance and verify if design-intent has been achieved.

Winter Series 2013/14

The first ITA PhD Talks will start with David López López,
Kathrin Dörfler & Romana Rust.
If you are interested in attending, you can sign up here.

ITA PhD's: For presenting your research in upcoming sessions, 
please fill out this form.

Date: November 20 2013, 12:00-13:00
Location: ETH Zürich Hoenggerberg Campus (Science City)
Building HIL Room E 67.1 (Bloody Hell)

Talk David López López

Thin-Tile Vaulting Structural Analysis and Construction – Assistant Chair of Building Structures (Block)

His doctoral research within the Block Research Group focuses on the structural behavior and assessment methods of thin-tile vaults. David has experience in this field as a mason, designer, project manager and structural consultant. He has led many thin-tile vault construction workshops in Spain and abroad and he has built, analyzed and tested vaults for his master thesis.

Talk Kathrin Dörfler & Romana Rust

Adaptive Robotic Fabrication Processes – Chair of Architecture and Digital Fabrication (Gramazio & Kohler)

Kathrin and Romana graduated at TU-Vienna and TU-Graz in 2012 with a joint master thesis named „Nach vor und zurück – Integration digitaler und physischer Gestaltungsprozesse (Integration of digital and physical design methods)“. Since October 2013 they are research assistants at the Chair of Architecture and Digital Fabrication (Prof. Fabio Gramazio, Prof. Matthias Kohler). Their research focuses on the design and study of interactive feedback-based fabrication processes. On the basis of specific case studies and experiments they are developing software tools for their application within the architectural domain.