BREUER × AM (2024-04)¶

Additive Manufacturing in Construction (AMC) provides a high degree of design freedom, capable of integrating complex functional requirements with streamlined manufacturing processes. In traditional industrial construction, adherence to standardised practices often necessitates the division of building functions across multiple layers and materials. This is done to comply with structural and functional guidelines outlined in building codes, as well as to incorporate active and passive heating and cooling systems in building envelopes. In the 1960s, architect Marcel Breuer introduced pioneering methods to address the complexities of multi-layered building systems. His visionary approach, exemplified in projects like the IBM Research Center in La Gaude, France, sought to synthesise building services, installations, and passive solar protection measures into a single modular precast façade panel. His design approach involved the manual calculations of solar angles and graphical methods to obtain desirable shading properties for the building envelope elements. However, the manufacturing constraints imposed by concrete casting techniques posed limitations on the ability to create bespoke variations, necessitating an excessive reliance on standardised production of identical elements (Fig. 2). AMC technologies offer unique design flexibility to address both the need for functional integration and adherence to building codes and non-standard and bespoke production possibilities by leveraging geometric differentiation. Going beyond multi-layered and multimaterial building systems, functional integration and hybridisation in mono-material building systems further enable the attainment of sufficient dismantlability and circular material utilisation at the end-of-life stage of building envelope elements. Within this context, this research explores how AMC technology can be utilised to expand the concept of prefabrication of concrete elements towards functionally integrated and hybridised building envelope elements while reducing the materials used. As such, this research comprises: a) a bespoke volume and surface design of individual building envelope elements in an overall building envelope, b) the structural zone design, and c) the thermal zone design of the internal structure of these bespoke elements (Fig. 3). The proposed methods were experimentally tested and validated by producing a 1:1-scale demonstrator using the AMC technology of Selective Cement Activation (SCA).