FROM AUTOMATED TO AUTONOMOUS ASSEMBLY

摘要

Construction poses one of the most immediate challenges to architecture as a discipline. With tremendous energy consumption, inefficiencies, cost, timelines, labour shortages and litigation dominating the construction landscape, we urgently need a new perspective on assembly. Since the introduction of computation and digital fabrication in the 1950s and 1960s, architects have been exploring ideas for automation in design and construction. However, rapid advances in these technologies have brought with them a major challenge. Despite the digital fabrication of our new customised and highly performative materials, we are still left with the problem of manual assembly, where humans or machines spend increasing amounts of costly time and energy laboriously building complex structures.