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Introductory Speech of the Building/Cementituous Additive Manufacturing Session, Given by Prof. Aaron Sprecher
About one year ago, Profs. Arnon Bentur, Rafael Sacks (Director of the National Building Research Institute), Oded Amir, and I joined forces to create the new Center for Advanced Manufacturing in Construction at the National Building Research Institute. Our motivation to shape this unique trans-faculty and transdisciplinary center is driven by the necessity to reconsider our construction method in the digital age and the age of climate change and environmental uncertainties. The building industry is one of the largest polluting industries, leaving an unprecedented carbon footprint and material waste to future generations. We believe that reconsidering the building method using advanced computational platforms, manufacturing systems, and material optimization will significantly reduce material waste and labor intensity. For us, the stakes are high as global warming, resource scarcity, and environmental instabilities are now emerging worldwide.
Reconsidering our methods of manufacturing calls for a holistic vision capable of managing the complexity of parameters that regulate building construction, from building design to robotic manufacturing. We are grateful to the Technion Additive Manufacturing Center for supporting our vision that expands now beyond our Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering. In the following projects, you will witness the emergence of new engineering and design thinking strategies. These strategies create a synergy between design computation, material optimization, and tooling. Indeed, large-scale digital manufacturing methods call for addressing all of these parameters to ensure an economy of material, labor and time in the construction industry.
Our session is therefore structured around these three topics of material, design, and tooling. It will end with a keynote lecture by Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic from the Cornell University Department of Architecture. Their recent visionary projects in the field of concrete additive manufacturing address these fundamental questions. We will open the floor for questions at the end of each paper presentation, and our session will conclude with a discussion.
We want to finish this introduction by thanking Professor Gershon Elbert, Head of the Technion Additive Manufacturing Center, Suzie Eid and their team for initiating and organizing this inspiring conference.
