Aerial AM Shell
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Aerial AM Shell
Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial AM)
The construction industry is adopting additive manufacturing (AM) technologies for onsite construction due to their ability to reduce the time and cost of building. On-site AM typically involves the continuous extrusion of horizontal layers of material using a gantry, larger than the build volume, to move a single extruder mechanism. Transporting and installing such gantry systems limits AM to easily accessible sites. In contrast, Aerial AM, enables swarm-based, parallel manufacturing in remote, or hard-to-access locations, providing greater flexibility and boundless manufacturing. Having recently published in Nature a demonstration of the world’s first Aerial AM with cementitious and composite materials in-flight, Aerial AM Shell is a speculative project that explores the potential of an aerial additively manufactured architecture that is realizable without the use of temporary scaffolding.
Aerial AM Shell (AAMS)
Most AM building designs are constrained to vertically extruded geometries, with floors or roofs constructed by other means, which limits building automation and material efficiencies achievable in monolithic free-form geometries such as funicular shell structures. Shells provide long-spanning spatial enclosure with a minimal amount of material, yet require support scaffolding during construction. Although less efficient than a funicular shell, AAMS is realizable without temporary supports. A shell geometry is reinforced throughout construction with ridging, trussing, and vertical props in regions of high structural deflection or shallow inclination identified by frequent analysis in-the-loop. The design is developed through a multi-agent simulation within the Aerial AM software framework, aligning it with actual real-time design and construction workflows. Its incremental swarm-building approach opens possibilities for adaptive or regenerative building, where architecture might be realized through acts of continuous construction or modification over time.
Lead Researcher: Robert Stuart-Smith
Lead Collaborators: Vijay Pawar (UCL), Mirko Kovac (Imperial College / Empa)
Researchers: Patrick Danahy
Associated Research Papers:
Stuart-Smith, R., D. Darekar, P. Danahy, B. Bahadir Kocer, V. Pawar, and M. Kovac. “Collective Aerial Additive Manufacturing.” In Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Association of Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA), edited by M. Akbarzadeh, D. Aviv, H. Jamelle, and R. Stuart-Smith, 44-55. La Vergne: IngramSpark, 2023.
Stuart-Smith, R., M. Kovac, V. Pawar, C. Williams, and P. Shepard. “Aerial Additive Manufacturing” (Aerial AM). In Time, Space, Existence: Venice 2023 Architecture Biennial, edited by European Cultural Centre Team, 474-475. Amsterdam: European Cultural Centre, 2023.
Zhang, K., P. Chermprayong, F. Xiao, D. Tzoumanikas, B. Dams, S. Kay, B.B. Kocer, A. Burns, L. Orr, T. Alhinai, C. Choi, D.D. Darekar, W. Li, S. Hirschmann, V. Soana, S.A. Ngah, C. Grillot, S. Sareh, A. Choubey, R. Stuart-Smith and M. Kovac, et al. “Aerial Additive Manufacturing with Multiple Autonomous Robots.” Nature 609, no. 7928, 2022: 709-717. DOI. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04988-4.
