Self Build Charts

Site Clearance page 54

Laying Foundations page 54

Roof Structure page 54

Within the Construction Industry, there is a wide variety of trade journals

These photos are from Bricks on a Budget in Build It Magazine, Issue July 2010

This house was designed and project-managed by Michelle Taylor

Of special interest, is the type of bricks used, the detailing at the Quions and the corbelling

It also provides an example of Internal Brickwork. This type of work needs particular care, since any blemishes are like big zits.

Despite an otherwise beautiful face, the eye is always drawn to those spots!

Roof Tiling page 55

Internal Brickwork page 58

Video

FlexBrick

ETH Zurich, 2008-2010

Masonry facade system prefabricated in a robot-based manufacturing process



The efficiency and flexibility of this digitally informed process of prefabrication is combined with the appreciated and sustainable construction of masonry in-situ.

   

New potentials for the discipline of architecture arise as new kinds of application in terms of technical performance and new ways of aesthetical expression are made possible.

All images and text from Digital Fabrication

Pike Loop

Installation. Manhattan, New York, 2009



Pike Loop was a 22m (72ft) long structure built from bricks, the most traditional building material widely used in New York



The structure was built using the robotic fabrication unit R-O-B, housed in a transportable freight container.



More than 7000 bricks form an infinite loop that weaves along the pedestrian island





All images and text from Digital Fabrication

Venice Biennial

All images from Design Explorations














Source: Design Explorations

Vineyard

Gantenbein Vineyard
Fläsch (Switzerland), 2006
Non-Standardised Brick Façade



The project was realised as an extension of a small but remarkably successful vineyard.

The wine producers wanted a new service building, consisting of a large fermentation room for processing grapes, a cellar dug into the ground for storing the wine barrels, and a roof terrace for wine tastings and receptions.



The initial design proposed a simple concrete skeleton filled with bricks: The masonry acts as a temperature buffer, as well filtering the sunlight for the fermentation room behind it.



The bricks are offset so that daylight penetrates the hall through the gaps between the bricks. Direct sunlight, which would have a detrimental effect on the fermentation, is however excluded.



The robotic production method that we developed at the ETH enabled us to lay each one of the 20,000 bricks precisely according to programmed parameters—at the desired angle and at the exact prescribed intervals.



According to the angle at which they are set, the individual bricks each reflect light differently and thus take on different degrees of lightness.



Similar to pixels on a computer screen they add up to a distinctive image and thus communicate the identity of the vineyard.



The wall elements were manufactured as a pilot project in our research facilities at the ETH Zurich, transported by lorry to the construction site, and installed using a crane.



As the robot could be driven directly by the design data, without our having to produce additional implementation drawings, we were able to work on the design of the façade up to the very last minute before starting production.



All Images and Text from Digital Fabrication

Robot Video

Screen Shot from Video

The Gantenbein Winery, in Fläsch, Switzerland, has been the prototype for an entirely new approach to bricklaying: using modified industrial robots.