The Master in Robotics and Advanced Construction (MRAC) seeks to train a new generation of interdisciplinary professionals who are capable of facing our growing need for a more sustainable and optimised construction ecosystem. The Master is focused on the emerging design and market opportunities arising from novel robotic and advanced manufacturing systems.
Through a mixture of seminars, workshops, and studio projects, the master programme challenges the traditional processes in the Construction Sector. It investigates how advances in robotics and digital fabrication tools change the way we build and develop processes and design tools for such new production methods.
“Anatomy of a Machine” is a research project from the MRAC program that seeks to integrate knowledge from previous explorations in spill and strokes. To achieve shape, clay stamping was selected as the primary fabrication tool, establishing a 40x40cm working area as the base for experimentation. The project investigates how precise robotic movements—varying position, orientation, … Read more
This article presents our Workshop 1.2 project, which focuses on analyzing data and translating it into robotic movements to control an ABB IRB 6700-150/3.20 industrial robot equipped with a plastic pellet extruder for additive manufacturing. The core concept of the project involved studying the tsunami-related terrain and displacement data, extracting spatial and intensity-based information to … Read more
Context This exercise explores robotic fabrication processes through the direct manipulation of malleable materials. The assignment consisted of producing a 2.5D clay piece, measuring 40 × 40 cm with a maximum height of 5 cm, understood as a physical result of a robotically applied force on soft matter.Rather than designing a predefined form, the goal … Read more
Anatomy of the Machine: Impact Printing abc What is Impact printing? Whilst clay has been used as a construction method for thousands of years, with evidence of buildings dating back to as early as 9000-10,000 BC in Mesopotamia, impact printing is a extremely modern take of the additive construction process. Research particuarly at ETH Zurich … Read more
Introduction In Anatomy of a Machine: Spill, we designed and built our own paint-spilling tools and worked with large robotic arms to create expressive, A0-scale paintings. Over the weeks, we tested movements with our hands, translated them into robotic trajectories, and refined both the tools and the resulting spill patterns. Using Arduino and laser-cut acrylic … Read more
Exploring Clay 3D Printing Through Viscosity, Speed, and Time For the Shape exercise within Anatomy of the Machine, we worked with clay as a material, specifically focusing on robotic 3D printing using clay extrusion. The objective was to understand how material behavior, robotic parameters, and geometry interact, and how form emerges from the machine–material relationship. … Read more
INTRODUCTION The first assignment of Anatomy of a Machine investigates how a robotic system can produce a brushstroke, an action typically associated with human intuition, variability, and continuous motion. Rather than beginning with predefined toolpaths or digital control, the project starts by reframing the human hand as a machine. Through a series of analog drawing … Read more
In the second exercise of Anatomy of a Machine, our goal was to understand how a robot expresses itself through material behavior. Instead of carving or shaping solids, we explored how liquid material behaves when actuated, accelerated, and released through a controlled spraying mechanism. “Spill” became a study of force, viscosity, height, angle, and timing … Read more
Advanced toolpath design for FDM process Students will design and simulate a toolpath for a small object intended for interior or product design. The focus is on exploring creative toolpath strategies, especially non-planar slicing, where the toolpath height changes across the object. Students must design a non-planar path and use attractors to locally deform the … Read more
Over the past four weeks, we developed a project focused on designing and fabricating a custom-made end effector for a robotic arm, with the aim of producing a painting on a canvas using black acrylic paint. Unlike the first assignment, where the drawing tool was predefined, this time we were required to build our own … Read more
Evy Slabbinck – D2P – Design to Production How do you build a complex timber structure with zero errors in record time? Evy Slabbinck from Design-to-Production reveals the answer: merging computational precision with material intelligence. In this interview, we explored bending-active design, digital fabrication workflows, and the philosophy behind projects that push timber to new … Read more
Initial drawing explorations Mapping Human Gesture to Robotic Logic Introduction The first assignment of Anatomy of a Machine explores a fundamental question:How can a robot reproduce something as subtle, intuitive and continuous as a human brushstroke? Before defining any toolpath, our goal was to momentarily step away from machines and instead observe our own hands … Read more
SYNFORM is a design-to-fabrication studio that fabricates luxury scenography and architectural surfaces that are parametric, modular and reconfigurable through large-scale 3D printing using recyclable plastics. Market Context According to Precedence Research, the global 3D printing market is estimated at around USD 29.29 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to USD 134.58 billion by … Read more
Introduction This project investigates the dialogue between human gesture and robotic motion through painting. Over three weeks, students study brush behavior, paint flow, and stroke dynamics, beginning manually and progressively translating gestures into robotic trajectories. The final outcome is an A2 robot-made painting, accompanied by a vectorial drawing and a 60-second video, reflecting the anatomy … Read more
The Black Paintings are a group of 14 works created by Francisco de Goya between 1819 and 1823, during the final years of his life. Painted directly onto the walls of his house, the Quinta del Sordo, these works represent one of the most intimate, radical, and unsettling moments in Western art. They are now … Read more
