Philippe Block
The Edward and Mary Allen Lecture in Structural Design
Rethinking construction: Learning from the past to design a better future
Following the motto “strength through geometry” and the principles of traditional unreinforced masonry construction, this lecture will show how translating the (lost) knowledge of the Gothic master builders into today’s praxis results in truly sustainable, circular and economical structures, addressing climate change by significantly reducing embodied emissions, utilising fewer single-use resources and minimising construction waste.
Philippe Block is Full Professor of Architecture and Structures and head of the Institute of Technology in Architecture (ITA) at ETH Zurich, where he co-leads the Block Research Group (BRG) with Dr. Tom Van Mele. He is also the director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) on Digital Fabrication. He studied architecture and structural engineering at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium and at MIT, where he under the guidance of Prof. John Ochsendorf earned a SMArchS in 2005 and a PhD in 2009.
The BRG develops sustainable and circular construction solutions through the advancement of computational structural design and innovation in digital fabrication and construction. Specific expertise includes computational form finding, discrete masonry, graphic statics, architectural and structural geometry, digital fabrication and construction, and open-source computation.
Philippe and Tom translate their research into practice, with the consultancy Foreign Engineering and the ETH spin-off VAULTED. Most significant is the development and commercialisation of the Rippmann Floor System (RFS), a low-carbon-footprint, fully circular prefabricated concrete floor solution.
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