Brick Labyrinth

two curved brick walls, placed as in a labyrinth, viewed from the top

The Brick Labyrinth is re-visiting one of the most archaic building techniques, dry-stacked brick walls, in a completely new setting. For the first time, the Master of Advanced Studies used the multi-robotic gantry system in the Robotic Fabrication Laboratory to build a full-scale architectural installation of a brick labyrinth. Students used computational tools not only to iterate through designs but also to check the stability and feasibility of the produced structures and to generate the sequence and commands to control the multi-robotic fabrication of the final structure. Together with multiple iterations of physical tests and prototypes, this allowed them to design and build the labyrinth which consisted of over 10000 bricks with a weight of 30 tons in under 4 weeks.

more information about this project

inside the Brick Labyrinth installations, with one brick wall on each side, option to turn to left or go on by the right as a person walks through

close up of the largest part of the brick wall the logic of brick placement in plan

two robotic arms assembling bricks to build the wall, placing the bricks using custom built end effectors

Gramazio Kohler Research
Prof. Matthias Kohler, Prof. Fabio Gramazio

Teaching Team: David Jenny, Luka Piskorec, Stefana Parascho, Hannes Mayer

Sponsors and Collaborators: Keller AG Ziegeleien

Special Thanks: Mike Lyrenmann and Philippe Fleischmann (Robotic Fabrication Laboratory), Andreas Reusser (Concrete Lab)