News

Dr. Van Mele and Prof. Block win IASS Tsuboi Award 2010

Dr. Van Mele and Prof. Block win IASS Tsuboi Award 2010

20.09.2011

For their paper “Novel Form Finding Method for Fabric Formwork for Concrete Shells”, presented at the IASS 2010 Symposium in Shanghai, China, Dr. Tom Van Mele and Prof. Block were awarded with the prestigious IASS Tsuboi Award for the most outstanding paper presented and published in the Proceedings of the IASS Symposium. The paper will be published in the December issue of the Journal of the IASS.

History of fabric formwork paper

History of fabric formwork paper

08.09.2011

Structural Concrete, the peer-reviewed journal of the International Federation for Structural Concrete (fib), has published our paper entitled "History and overview of fabric formwork: using fabrics for concrete casting". The paper, written by Diederik Veenendaal, Prof. Mark West and Prof. Block, presents a comprehensive historical overview of fabric formwork, listing key innovators, tracing technological developments, and offering examples of structures built with these methods throughout the past decades.Link to paper

BLOCK Lab at ETH Zurich

BLOCK Lab at ETH Zurich

05.09.2011

The BLOCK Research Group has a new research facility at ETH Zurich. Located in the Civil engineering testing hall, a beautiful experimental research laboratory has been designed by ROK. The BLOCK Lab will house a state-of-the-art testing set-up for modeling three-dimensional collapse of complex masonry structures using 3D-printed structural models. The upper floor will host the experimental setup of the digital stereotomy project.More info

Invited lecture Prof. Block at EMPA

Invited lecture Prof. Block at EMPA

16.08.2011

Prof. Block has been invited on August 24, 2011 by Dr. Peter Richner, head of the Civil and Mechanical Engineering department and head of the Research Focal Area Sustainable Built Environment at EMPA - Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology to present the BLOCK Research Group's innovative and original research. Prof. Block's lecture is entitled "New Masonry Vaults: Learning from the old master builders to design a better future".

Tower of Babylon featured in Baublatt

Tower of Babylon featured in Baublatt

02.08.2011

Our student project involving the construction of a wall with hand-pressed paper bricks has been featured in the 22.07.2011 issue of Baublatt as well as their website.

Call for abstracts for icff 2012

Call for abstracts for icff 2012

25.07.2011

Prof. Block has been invited to sit on the Scientific Steering Committee for the second International Conference on Flexible Formwork (icff 2012).Abstracts for this conference are now being invited for technical papers and posters whose focus is on the research, development or practical applications of flexible formwork systems. Early registration for the conference, which is taking place in Bath on June 27th to 29th 2012, is now also open.

Freeform vault featured on BauNetz Wissen

Freeform vault featured on BauNetz Wissen

07.07.2011

Our research project on freeform tile vaulting has been featured on the website BauNetz Wissen in the category "Special structures" in Masonry.

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ETH Zurich
Institute of Technology in Architecture
Block Research Group
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