Beyond Transparency:

Project Credits

• MAS DFAB in Architecture and Digital Fabrication | ETH Zurich

• Teaching Team Digital Building Technologies
  Rena Giesecke (Project lead), Ioanna Mitroupoulou, Rémy Clemente, Eleni Skevaki, Yael Ifrah (MAS ETH DFAB coordination)

• Students
  Designed by students of the Master in Advanced Studies in Architecture and Digital Fabrication 2020-2021:

  Evgenia Angelaki, Liya Sunny Anthraper, Pascal Bach, Yen Fen Chan, Wei-Ting Chen, Ilaria Giacomini, Simon Griffioen, Guillaume Jami, Lena Kitani, Artemis Maneka, Beril Önalan, Priyank Soni, Foteini Salveridou, Ko Tsuruta, Chengyuan Wei, Carlos Wilkening

Exhibition

The pavilion was exhibited at the Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue Rüschlikon fromSeptember to the end of October 2021.

How can robotic fabrication enable a novel materiality of glass and create new architectural experiences?

The Beyond Transparency glass pavilion explores how Additive Manufacturing (AM), computational design and digital fabrication can enhance industry float glass. A novel robotic process developed at the chair of Digital Building Technologies enables the fabrication of a polychromatic glass mono material with varying colors and textures. 

The students of the Master of Advanced Studies in Architecture and Digital Fabrication 2020-2021 explore the unique potential of this technology in a 11 week course. The creative potential and interconnection between fabrication processes, materiality, color and geometry lay the basis for the design and fabrication of the full-scale installation consisting of 18, individually designed glass elements of 2x1m size. Each panel is robotically fabricated and kilned in the facilities of ETH Zürich.

Customized computational tools are developed to design patterns of color and material deposition. Strategies of computational design enable design from granular detail, to the overall pattern design. To design color and transparency properties of each panel, a point cloud model of the site is employed, to create the filtering effects in relation to site characteristics.

Designed specifically for the site of the Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue in Zurich, the forty square meter pavilion is an immersive, panoramic light color space assembled of eighteen individual panels along an oval floor plan. Each panel showcases how standardized architectural materials can be robotically enhanced with novel material properties of varying color, opacity and texture. The immersive installation demonstrates the potential of glass architecture beyond mere transparency and reinterprets its surrounding landscape.