News
23.06.2011
The very exciting final presentation of the Tower of Babylon Project has been submitted to the GlobalTech Alliance student competition. The students show through paper brick structures how much ETHZ and Zurich is wasting paper. Check out their video and pdf submissions. Also, do read the nice article on ETH Life. Congrats to the student team!
22.06.2011
On June 22, the BLOCK Research Group will host a lecture by Prof. Mark West, founding Director of CAST, the University of Manitoba's Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology in Winnipeg, Canada. This lecture will present some of the many ways in which extraordinarily beautiful and efficient architectural and structural forms can be constructed using fabric formwork technology.More infoVideo
16.06.2011
DeleteInput. Sad, but unavoidable… Our freeform tile vault had to come down. Looking forward to the next prototype.As an homage, check out this movie of 100 days of vaulting.
27.05.2011
Matthias Rippmann and Lorenz Lachauer implemented the forward TNA form finding framework as a plug-in for Rhinoceros, which provides a highly interactive, bidirectional 3-D form finder for compression-only structures. Via eat-a-bug.blogspot.com, RhinoVAULT got blogged on "Rhino News, etc.", the official blog of Rhinoceros. Check out the post here.
25.05.2011
Prof. Block was invited to present at the GlobalTech Alliance Workshop "Sub-Saharan Africa: Cooperation and capacity building", held at the EiABC in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on May 23-24, 2011. Prof. Block's presentation, "From SUDU to NESTown: Sustainable, low-cost building solutions", gave an overview of projects and teaching done by the BLOCK research Group in Ethiopia, introducing novel construction techniques, based on local materials. Particularly, the challenges of providing sustainable capacitybuilding and safe technology transfer were discussed.
06.05.2011
The BLOCK Research Group (Lorenz Lachauer, Matthias Rippmann and Prof. Block) has been invited by Prof. Christoph Gengnagel to a workshop from May 6 to May 8 at the Universität der Künste (UdK) Berlin, to introduce Thrust Network Analysis. The workshop will furthermore couple our novel shell design tool (RhinoVAULT) to finite element analysis methods.
29.04.2011
Philipp Eversmann and Paul Ehret invited Lorenz Lachauer to give a lecture at the Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture, Paris, on April 30, as part of the seminar In Silico Design. Recent research from the BLOCK Research Group will be presented.More Info
29.04.2011
The Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) is a part of the newly founded Singapore-ETH Center for Global Environmental Sustainability (SEC). The BLOCK Research Group is part of the Singapore ETHiopia Urban Laboratory (SEUL), organized within Module VI: Territorial Organisation of Prof. Dr. Marc Angélil and Prof. Franz Oswald. The laboratory expects to push the NESTown project to the next level. Lara Davis represents us in Singapore for 4 months.
27.04.2011
Designed by Matthias Rippmann and built over a period of almost 6 weeks by Lara Davis using a cardboard guidework produced by Tom Pawslofski, the prototype of a Catalan, thin-tile freeform masonry shell is finished. The undulating vault was designed using new form finding tools based on TNA and shows a new language for compression-only structures. Check out the spectacular construction behind the HIL building at ETH Hönggerberg.More infoMore info
12.04.2011
Prof. Block and Prof. Dr. Sigrid Adriaenssens from Princeton University are being joined by Dr. Chris J. K. Williams from Bath University as editors for their book project 'Practical Form Finding and Structural Optimization of Shell Structures'. Diederik Veenendaal acts not only as contributing author, but also as editorial assistant.
06.04.2011
Prof. Block was invited to present his research and projects on new masonry shells at Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin. Invited as expert for a project in development, Prof. Block got an interesting insight into the workings of this extremely stimulating design environment.
01.04.2011
eQUILIBRIUM is an interactive, web-based learning platform for structural design, based on graphic statics, which is being developed by Dr. Tom Van Mele and Prof. Block. As a teaser, the home page features a few exciting examples of more to come.
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