Despite the enormous emissions and raw materials needed to produce concrete, healthy structures made of concrete are demolished daily under the jaws of hydraulic excavators and energy-intensive crushers. We propose to upcycle large irregular concrete rubble pieces from demolition sites into walls with the help of digital tools and through minimal material processing.
Wall 2.2m x 2.7m built using large irregular concrete rubble pieces with the help of a digitally-hacked industrial gantry and a drill mounted on a robotic arm – credits : Maxence Grangeot – SXL & CRLC – EPFL
Our real-scale demonstrators are walls of approx. 2.5m tall, 2.7m long, 30cm thick, built out of large “off the pile” concrete rubble pieces. Digital tools are used to harness the geometrical complexity inherent to found irregular concrete rubble pieces and to precisely assemble them into a slender yet stable wall. Due to its commodity and environmental potential, using unaltered concrete rubble as a new construction material hints at new possibilities for circular construction.
From concrete waste to walls: An investigation of reclamation and digital technologies for new load-bearing structures
