Dezeen teamed up with Holcim to host a live talk about Striatus, a 3D-printed concrete footbridge that the building material company built in Venice with Zaha Hadid Architects and Block Research Group at ETH Zurich.
Moderated by Dezeen's chief content officer Benedict Hobson, the talk explained how the Striatus bridge was conceived, designed and constructed, and explore the implications that the project has for the future of construction.
Striatus is a 16-metre-long bridge built by the Block Research Group at Swiss university ETH Zurich and Zaha Hadid Architects, in collaboration with concrete 3D-printing specialists incremental3D. The project was made possible by Holcim with its custom-made proprietary concrete ink.
The unreinforced arched bridge comprises 53 hollow blocks, each printed from 500 layers of concrete, which are held in place solely through compression. Philippe Block, founder of the Block Research Group at ETH Zurich, was on the panel alongside Shajay Bhooshan, senior associate at Zaha Hadid Architects and founder of ZHA CODE, the firm's computational design research group. Representing Holcim on the panel was Nollaig Forrest, the company's head of communications and public affairs.
Philippe Block is founder of the Block Research Group at ETH Zürich
Block is a professor at the Institute of Technology in Architecture at ETH Zurich, where he leads the Block Research Group with Dr Tom Van Mele. He is also director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence ...