Do Robots Dream of Construction Sites?

Robots can no longer be imagined as separate from our daily lives – whether in factories, on our streets, or in our homes. Their presence elicits a wide spectrum of reactions: they promise relief from dangerous, physically demanding, and monotonous labor, while simultaneously raising concerns about job displacement and the erosion of human control. Whether deemed intelligent or not, robots are far from merely auxiliary machines; they provoke, enable, sustain, and at the same time complicate the fabric of human experience.

In construction, these tensions become especially visible. Robots have long been expected to relieve workers from hazardous and physically strenuous tasks, while offering the industry faster and more cost-effective building processes. Yet today, construction largely remains a manual practice. While high-tech machinery is occasionally showcased in flagship projects, the majority of work on building sites continues to rely on human labor to carry out demanding, unhealthy, and often dangerous tasks – while simultaneously leaving an irreversibale environmental impact on the planet.

It explores the potential roles of robots and machines in architecture and construction, ranging from simple systems performing repetitive motions to more complex scenarios in which humans and robots collaborate in fluid and mutually supportive ways. It reflects on the history of automation in construction, examines why advanced robotic technologies have yet to be widely adopted on site, and questions how recent developments in robotics, artificial intelligence, and digitalization are reshaping the environmental impct of the industry and the experience of human workers. Ultimately we ask: Can robotics enable more sustainable approaches to construction? And can robotic processes evolve into genuinely collaborative practices that enhance the experience of construction work?

Through a range of projects, the exhibition examines key challenges and opportunities at the intersection of automation, labor, and sustainability. These works are presented through a combination of live robotic demonstrations, built prototypes, and mediated formats, including film and documentation. Robots autonomously constructing arches, interactive systems assembling structures from reclaimed and discarded wood, and collaborative workflows in which humans and machines jointly build structural walls – the presented works span from practical, real-world applications to speculative scenarios, offering a vision of future building practices and evolving environmental and labor dynamics.

At its core, the exhibition addresses a central contradiction: machines are often conceived as replacements for human labor, yet construction remains deeply dependent on human skills, needs, and agency. Questioning this tension is essential to imagining more meaningful and human-centered approaches to automation. Moving toward a future where robots are seamlessly integrated into the complex and uncertain ecosystem of construction requires not only technical innovation, but also social and historical reflection. Rather than envisioning robots as substitutes for humans, this exhibition proposes alternative scenarios in which machines support, respond to, and empower human workers – enhancing their capacities rather than diminishing them.

The projects presented are based on research conducted at EPFL. They investigate both the technical challenges—such as perception, planning, and adaptability—and the human dimensions of construction work, including interaction, experience, and adoption. Together, they outline a vision of construction in which machines are developed and deployed through a genuinely human-centered perspective, moving away from the dream of automation and towards a practice based on collaboration.