Automating Concrete Construction (ACORN)

我们的长期愿景是通过创造一种文化，对混凝土建筑的制造，组装，再利用和解构采取全新的整体方法，从而大大提高整个建筑行业的可持续性和生产力，从而创造更健康，更安全的建筑环境。目前，建筑物中使用的混凝土中有多达一半是不必要的，并且只是因为它是使用自罗马时代以来使用的平面模板成型的。这导致梁、柱和楼板的棱柱形状效率低下，这是浪费的，建筑上的限制，也是建筑中体现排放的主要驱动力。情况不必如此。混凝土最初是一种液体，只要有合适的模具，它可以形成任何形状的结构。通过将混凝土建筑物的施工转移到一个高度自动化、质量控制的环境中，并使用机器人技术来创建优化的非棱柱模板，我们的建筑可以变得更可持续，建筑行业也更有生产力。ACORN的方法建立在团队成熟的计算设计专业知识之上，他们开发了创新的数字化工具和技术来优化形状、布局、在设计阶段对建筑物的结构和立面进行设计。它将把这种方法延伸到建筑过程的下游，包括制造。其新奇在于创建了集成的端到端数字流程，以自动化非棱柱形建筑构件的设计和制造。它充分利用了近年来廉价机器人技术的普及，并将其引入一个在可持续性和生产力方面已经成熟的行业。一些简单的事情，比如让梁、柱和楼板具有完成其工作所需的形状，而不是它们需要容易形成的形状，可以让我们彻底重新思考建筑物中使用材料的方式。我们可以开始提出这样的问题，比如它们应该是什么形状，我们应该用什么材料来制造它们，我们如何有效地加强这些元素，我们如何考虑终身价值，我们应该如何组织我们的设计过程来利用它们？ACORN将回答所有这些问题。

Our long-term vision is to dramatically improve whole life construction sector sustainability and productivity by creating a culture that takes a fresh, holistic approach to the manufacture, assembly, reuse, and deconstruction of concrete buildings, leading to a healthier, safer, built environment. Currently, up to half of the concrete used in buildings is unnecessary, and is only there because it is shaped using planar formwork, used since Roman times. This leads to inefficient prismatic shapes for the beams, columns and floor-slabs, which is wasteful, architecturally constraining and a major driver of embodied emissions in construction. This need not be the case. Concrete is initially a liquid and can form structures of any shape, given the right mould. By moving the construction of concrete buildings off-site, to a highly automated, quality controlled environment, and using robotics to create optimised non-prismatic formwork, our buildings can become more sustainable and the construction industry more productive.ACORN's approach builds on the well-established computational design expertise of the team, who have developed innovative digital tools and techniques to optimise the shape, layout, structure and façade of buildings during the design phase. It will extend this approach downstream in the building process, to encompass fabrication. The novelty here lies in the creation of integrated end-to-end digital processes to automate the design and manufacture of non-prismatic building elements. It capitalises on the recent proliferation of affordable robotics, and brings them into an industry ripe for a step-change in sustainability and productivity.Something as simple as allowing beams, columns and floor-slabs to have the shape they need to do their job, rather than the shape they need to be easily formed, allows a complete rethink of the way material is used in our buildings. We can begin to ask questions like what shape should they be, what material should we make them from, how can we reinforce the elements efficiently, how can we take into account whole-life value and how should we organise our design processes to take advantage? ACORN will answer all of these questions.