Automated Casting Systems for Spatial Concrete Lattices

Abstract

Today, concrete is (in weight) the most frequently-used material on the planet after water, with a quantity of one cubic metre per person per year. Every second, 126 tonnes of cement are poured across the world, amounting to some 3.4 billion tonnes per year, or the equivalent of just over 14,000 Empire State Buildings. Over the three years from 2011 to 2013, China consumed 6.6 billion tonnes of cement, in other words more than the 4.5 billion tonnes used by the USA during the entire 20th century (Sources: USGS, Cement Statistics 1900–2012; USGS, Mineral Industry of China, 1990–2013). If we add to these figures the fact that production of cement by the clinkerisation process involves firing at temperatures of around 1450–1500 °C, it is not difficult to understand why the cement industry is one of the most polluting industries. Just like the construction sector as a whole, this industry faces many challenges today. Amongst these challenges are optimising the cement production process in the face of the growing cost of more sophisticated “raw materials” and their proven or potential harmfulness, or rethinking the supply chains and the product lifecycle to reduce grey energy, and lastly developing new construction methods. This last problem, in which architects have the most influence, should be envisioned beyond the usual constraints associated with buildings’ regulations as a great opportunity for the architectural discipline, especially through the (re)examination of new or deprecated concrete and/or cement production methods. This search for new approaches is at the heart of the works we are presenting in this paper, oriented towards integrative computational and fabrication methods for the design and realization of three-dimensional concrete-based spatial lattices.