Gallery: Out of the Factory, Into the Field: Robots Go to Work for Architects

  • tablet
    01

    tablet

    *A student at the Vienna University of Technology uses an iPad to control a robot arm.* Photo: TU Vienna
  • column
    02

    column

    *Using a mixture of heating and grabbing, a robot arm forms a column out of plastic tubes.* Photo: SciArc
  • forming clay
    03

    forming-clay

    *With their modular attachments, robots can work with just about any substance. This one is forming clay.* Photo: Harvard GSD
  • milling concrete
    04

    milling-concrete

    *Decades after modernists fell in love with its plastic properties, concrete is still one of the most common building materials.*Photo: TU Graz
  • geometric death
    05

    geometric-death

    *Robots are interesting not only for the architecture they can produce, but also for the performance of that architecture, as seen in this promo spot for Federico Diaz's* Geometric Death Frequency-141. *That said, [the final product has to be seen to be believed](http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=549).* Video: Federico Diaz
  • pikes
    06

    pikes

    *In another example of the performance of architecture, ETH Zurich set up a robot arm to lay bricks on a traffic island in the middle of a New York street.* Video: [Storefront for Art and Architecture](http://www.storefrontnews.org/archive/2000?y=0&m=0&p=0&c=1&e=314)
  • steel
    07

    steel

    *This is a much more standard use of industrial robots in architecture: fabricating steel beams.* Photo: Zeman
  • foam
    08

    foam

    *Students use a robot equipped with a hot wire cutter to shape foam.*Photo: TU Delft/University of Michigan
  • redbull
    09

    redbull

    *The molds for this Red Bull promo piece were created by robots milling out forms under the direction of artists new to the interface.* Photo: Red Bull
  • kids
    10

    kids

    *Just some kids and a robot, hanging out and playing with blocks.* Photo: Courtesy of Rob|Arch
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