Researchers from Switzerland's ETH Zurich university will use robots and 3D printers to design and build a pioneering three-storey house at a local research and innovation campus.
Eight professors from ETH Zurich are working with business partners to build the DFAB House, which the team claims will be "the first house in the world to be designed, planned and built using predominantly digital processes".

The aim of DFAB House is to allow the team to test new building and energy technologies under real-life conditions. These include the robotically fabricated mesh-moulding process, which is the first to make the transition from research to usable architectural application.
"Unlike construction projects that use only a single digital building technology, such as 3D-printed houses, the DFAB House brings a range of new digital building technologies together," said the project's initiator, ETH professor Matthias Kohler. "This allows us to use the advantages of each individual method as well as their synergies, and express them architecturally."

The DFAB House is part of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Digital Fabrication project and is being erected at NEST ? a modular research and innovation building on the Dübendorf campus operated by the Empa institute for material science and technology development and the Eawag aquatic research organisation.
A series of test modules are being installed on platforms around the periphe...