The nearly finished central arch awaits its last brick. Like the entire LightVault structure, the central arch is constructed without any scaffolding or other external supports. The two industrial robots take turns placing a brick and supporting the structure, working from one side to the other.
Photo by CREATE Laboratory, Isla Xi Han & Edvard Bruun
Professor Stefana Parascho (right) and Isla Xi Han stand beneath a concrete and glass brick prototype built at the Embodied Computation Lab (ECL) in Princeton University’s School of Architecture, in January 2020.
Photo by CREATE Laboratory, Shenhan Zhu
Two Princeton researchers, architect Stefana Parascho and engineer Sigrid Adriaenssens, dreamed of using robots to simplify construction, even when building complex forms.
“We want to use robots to build beautiful architecture more sustainably,” said Adriaenssens, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and the director of the Form Finding Lab.
So the professors partnered with architecture and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) to create a striking and unique installation for the SOM exhibition “Anatomy of Structure” in London last March. They used two industrial robots provided by U.K.-based Global Robots to build a breathtaking vault, 7 feet tall, 12 feet across and 21 feet long, constructed of 338 transparent glass bricks from Poesia Glass Studio.
