Clay Rotunda: Sustainable Zero-waste Building with Computational Design Techniques

Contributors, Densities, Designing Matter, ETH Zürich, Formats, Gramazio Kohler, Low Density, Project, Technology and fabrication, Topics.

Bern, Building Technology, Clay, Computation, Construction, Consumption, Design strategies, Design-based research, Engineering, Geometry, Knowledge, Natural materials, Optimized construction, Project, Research, Robotics, Sustainability, Sustainable, Switzerland, Tradition, Zero-waste

The Clay Rotunda is a free-standing earth-based cylindrical structure constituting the outer, soundproof shell of the SE MusicLab, a high-fidelity music auditorium built inside the newly refurbished Gurten Brewery in Bern. The cylindrical structure combines clay, a sustainable zero-waste building material, with computational design techniques. Featuring a diameter of almost 11 meters the structure reaches a height of 5 meters with just 15 cm of unreinforced clay. It was built in-situ by a mobile robotic system that aggregated over 30,000 soft clay bricks over a period of 50 days.