[ Music]
>> There's almost an emotional response to a robot,
you know, there is this kind of idea that a robot is sort
of an artificial human.
But of course, all the other things
that make architecture what it is are the things that come,
you know, beyond the mechanical,
beyond the automated.
And what Gramazio and Kohler are doing
in Zurich that's really fascinating to us is
they're breaking away from the idea that a robot is there
to do menial, repetitive tasks and they're intervening
in that world.
They've been able to programme what the robot does.
In a way, they're kind of using it as an extension of
their own bodies, their own tools,
and changing what it does as it moves along.
[ Music ]
>> Robots have been around for the good part of 90 years.
They really got going in the 1970s, the 1980s,
and there are more sophisticated robots than this, but the fact
that they've been brought into an environment
where they're being used as design tools
is the exciting thing.
>> Now that the tools, both the hardware
and software, are becoming more affordable and easier to use,
architects have actually been able to use the same kind
of tools that have been out of reach for so long.
So, yes, it's only the beginning of things,
but we really see some opportunities
in design and fabrication.
They won't necessarily build whole buildings,
but this country does have very old building stock;
so we literally need to retrofit thousands of buildings every day
to meet up with demand.
And so it's certainly worthwhile considering how these kind
of technologies can work alongside traditionally skilled
labour to actually be able to keep this country's buildings
up to the standard that they need to be.
>> What we're looking at now
with these technologies is, we can bring them
into the academic environment and students and academics can,
in effect, experiment with the idea
of building, the idea of making.
I think that opens up a very exciting
new domain for universities, it might be that we are starting
to be regarded potentially as a place to prototype things
that might not be prototyped elsewhere.
We can carry a certain level of risk
that the commercial world can't carry in the sense that research
that fails is very valuable,
but in the commercial world it's a slightly --
it's obviously a very different scenario.
So I think this technology opens up not just something
for architects, but for universities
across the whole built environment sector
and allows us to do things that can't be done elsewhere.
[ Music ]