New book: AM Perspectives
Following on from the joint W.AMCA 2025 workshop last year, organised between Politecnico di Milano, the University of Minho, Portugal, and the University of Darmstadt, Germany, a book was compiled of the great research being undertaken by PhD students and researchers across the universities. The publication is available completely open access here, and features contributions from Prof Ornella Iuorio, Prof Ingrid Maria Paoletti and Prof Enrico Sergio Mazzucchelli, researchers Sam Wilcock, Emil Korkis and Giacomo Scrinzi, and PhD student Giuseppe Conti at Politecnico di Milano. See also a chapter from our group here!
Synopsis
The pressing challenges of climate change, reduction of available material and skilled labor for construction, have given a big input to the development of advanced manufacturing, declined in the triad of additive manufacturing, subtractive manufacturing and robotic platforms.
Additive Manufacturing (AM) has held its promise of mass customization, from the component scale to full building scale, providing the imagination that each component could be tailored to specific needs without significantly affecting its production costs or time. Today we are witnessing, that while, perhaps, complete dwellings have not been additively manufactured, certainly there have been few houses and neighbourhoods, having their walls fully 3D printed. We have seen them, to be developed in a variety of materials, from concrete, having the largest share, to earthen and bio-based now starting to appear. Bringing to the resurge of the traditional materials, as well opening up to a nearly infinite exploitation of innovative materials, which can be tailored to use organic compounds, to achieve thermal, acoustic and structural performance on demand.
The definition, prediction and assessment of the performance of those advanced manufactured materials, components, buildings and infrastructures is enabling to refine AM and the development of new architectural tectonics. Numerical and Virtual simulations are enabling prediction and testing of manufacturing stages, in use performances, and life cycle assessments to measure innovation versus current sustainable development goals.
Lately, we are also witnessing the manifestation of the (once) utopian dream of having machines, and robots around us building up components, and full structures. How far are we from the Plug-in City envisioned by the Archigram or by the Gramazio & Kohler urban forms resulting from robotic logics rather than human hands? Perhaps, we are still quite distant by their complete realization, but robotic agents are becoming real in the construction realm. From robotic systems assembling components, to platforms automating repetitive tasks, to digital twins sensing the cities, and drones constructing in harsh environments, we are witnessing growing human-robotic interactions.
Therefore, this book presents and discusses upon the latest research in the field of advanced manufacturing for the building realm, simulation for the advancement of customized properties of AM components, and robotic manufacturing of construction systems developed across a vivid network of researchers based in European Universities. We hope this book can stimulate reflection about the current and future trends in construction automation, with a strong emphasis on their architectural quality, forms of tectonics, and achievable performances. We hope some or many of these, research-based innovation will soon show their full application in construction industry!