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Made with COMPAS

Built work from the labs and practices that use COMPAS, from 3D-printed bridges to robotically assembled timber.
  • A leaf-shaped lattice of timber beams arching over a community garden at golden hour, with lavender in the foreground and apartment buildings behind

    HARDLEAF

    Quartiergarten Hard, Zürich, Switzerland · 2026

    A leaf-shaped timber pavilion of 182 beams for a neighbourhood garden, designed and built by students, with kiwi plants growing over it for shade.

    Coding Architecture II, Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich · Photo: lisdem

  • A robot arm on a truss in front of a large suspended net sprayed with soil and sprouting grass, while a person in a white overall draws in sand

    Sybil

    Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria · 2026

    Visitors draw in sand, and a robot turns their traces into toolpaths, spraying soil and seeds onto a suspended net that grows into a living surface.

    Architecture and Human Augmentation, ETH Zurich · Photo: Zita Oberwalder

  • A visitor stands inside a sweeping, curved landscape of overlapping wooden shingles, seen through translucent hanging curtains

    Dafne's Skin

    Triennale Milano, Milan, Italy · 2025

    An enlarged fragment of skin from the myth of Dafne, made of wooden tiles, whose surface slowly changes under a robotically applied living patina.

    Architecture and Human Augmentation, ETH Zurich, and MAEID · Photo: Zita Oberwalder

  • Looking up into a cupola of ruffled, translucent plastic layers in pink, blue and purple, printed as hollow tubular beads

    Gelateria Mulegns

    Mulegns, Switzerland · 2025

    An ice cream shop next to Tor Alva, under a cupola robotically printed from recycled plastic: 250 square metres that weigh less than a tonne.

    MAS ETH DFAB and Digital Building Technologies, ETH Zurich · Photo: Stefan Kaiser

  • A tall white tower of branching printed concrete columns, lit from within at dusk, rising between houses in a mountain village

    Tor Alva

    Mulegns, Switzerland · 2025

    A 30-metre white tower whose load-bearing columns were 3D printed in concrete, with the reinforcement placed by a second robot during printing.

    Digital Building Technologies, ETH Zurich · Photo: Benjamin Hofer / Nova Fundaziun Origen

  • Two researchers working beneath a robot arm that holds a timber frame module in place, with finished modules stacked behind them in a laboratory

    Caschlatsch

    Disentis/Mustér, Switzerland · 2024

    A climbable three-storey tower of 2000 timber beams, built by students and robots together in twenty weeks from first sketch.

    Gramazio Kohler Research and MAS ETH DFAB, ETH Zurich

  • A column built from thousands of compressed earth portions standing on a pallet outside a laboratory hall

    Impact Printing

    ETH Zurich, Switzerland · 2024

    A robot shoots portions of earth at high speed, building walls and columns layer after layer without cement and without waiting for the material to set.

    Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich

  • Two people sitting on the grass in front of a curving concrete footbridge with steel railings

    Phoenix

    Holcim Innovation Center, Lyon, France · 2023

    Striatus 2.0. A permanent footbridge of 3D-printed concrete blocks, assembled without mortar or reinforcement.

    Block Research Group, ETH Zurich, with ZHA CODE

  • Visitors sitting and reading among suspended reflective polygonal panels connected by tensioned cables

    Cloud Cities Barcelona

    Torre Glòries, Barcelona, Spain · 2022

    An artwork of tensioned cables and panels that visitors walk into, suspended in the dome of a Barcelona tower and held by 5000 nodes.

    Studio Tomás Saraceno, with Bollinger+Grohmann · Photo: Tomás Saraceno

  • Visitors at dusk around a pavilion of slender concrete columns and thin slabs lit warm from below, in front of the Vitra Design Museum

    Eggshell Pavilion

    Vitra Design Campus, Weil am Rhein, Germany · 2022

    Four concrete columns and four ribbed slabs, cast in thin formwork that a robot 3D printed from recycled plastic.

    Gramazio Kohler Research and MAS ETH DFAB, ETH Zurich · Photo: Erika Marthins

  • A two-metre printed shell with flaring, saddle-shaped tiers and blue and silver print lines, standing outdoors as a person walks past

    Fluid Forms

    ETH Zurich, Switzerland · 2022

    A two-metre shell of translucent, blue-streaked plastic, robotically 3D printed along curved, non-planar paths that follow its principal curvatures.

    Digital Building Technologies, ETH Zurich

  • A blue knitted ribbed shell with a large oculus, raised on slender steel props outside a museum

    KnitNervi

    MAXXI, Rome, Italy · 2022

    A flexible formwork for ribbed concrete shells, combining a bending-active gridshell with CNC-knitted shuttering.

    Block Research Group, ETH Zurich, with TU Delft · Photo: Mariana Popescu

  • Timber planter pods stacked on slender columns above a street, planted with trees and shrubs

    Semiramis

    Tech Cluster Zug, Switzerland · 2022

    A vertical habitat for plants. Four robots assembled its timber pods at once, with motion planning connected through COMPAS FAB.

    Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich

  • A tall grey room lined with undulating printed wall panels, with white loudspeaker columns and a person walking past

    Acoustic Panel System

    Immersive Design Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerland · 2021

    29 bespoke 3D-printed diffuser panels whose undulating surfaces were generated and tuned for how they scatter sound.

    Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich

  • A building corner topped by a curved, glazed concrete shell roof unit

    HiLo

    NEST, Dübendorf, Switzerland · 2021

    A research and living unit roofed by a thin concrete shell, cast on a cable-net and textile formwork.

    Block Research Group, ETH Zurich

  • A grey arched concrete footbridge with timber steps in a tree-lined garden, people walking beneath it

    Striatus

    Venice, Italy · 2021

    An arched footbridge of 3D-printed concrete blocks, assembled without mortar or reinforcement.

    Block Research Group, ETH Zurich, with ZHA CODE

  • The upper floors of DFAB HOUSE at night, a faceted translucent facade glowing above a glazed storey

    DFAB HOUSE

    NEST, Dübendorf, Switzerland · 2018

    Cooperating robots assembled the six timber modules of the house's two upper floors from 487 beams.

    Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich · Photo: NCCR Digital Fabrication

  • A woman standing inside a sweeping concrete shell lined with a purple knitted textile

    KnitCandela

    MUAC, Mexico City · 2018

    A thin, sinuous concrete shell built on a knitted formwork that travelled from Switzerland to Mexico in a suitcase.

    Block Research Group, ETH Zurich, with ZHA CODE

  • A worker walking past a tracked robot that stands beside a tall, twisting steel mesh it has fabricated

    Mesh Mould

    ETH Zurich, Switzerland · 2017

    A mobile robot bends and welds steel rebar into a mesh that is both the formwork and the reinforcement of a concrete element.

    Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich