From a global perspective, the building industry is one of the significant factors of environmental impact on the planet. Related activities in this industry refer to 40% of total carbon emissions; 28% of this value accounts for building operations, while the remaining 12% represents the manufacturing of new construction materials. Studies have revealed that 90% of construction waste comes from demolition (Ahn et al., 2022). Wood as a construction material is an uprising in the building practice due to its carbon storage capabilities and prefabricated possibilities (Gong, 2021). Prefabricated timber constructions can benefit rural Colombia's social reconstruction with the help of digital fabrication technologies. Likewise, this method could bring better performance of materials and its End of Life (EOL) (Ahn et al., 2022). Nevertheless, research has identified wood-to-wood timber connections as a gap in the academia to tackle better design, manufacture, assembly, and deconstruction (DfMA + D) in the field (Mehra et al., 2021). The following study aims to investigate the application of CNC technologies to fabricate novel and affordable wood joinery connection solutions for the construction of rural housing in Colombia. This research emphasizes the cooperation of the wood material to moisture fluctuation, with the aim of introducing a more sustainable and efficient assembly method.

Urban population growth predictions and the threats posed by climate change will exacerbate social problems such as equal access to water worldwide. This will happen mostly in developing countries and will couple with other environmental issues such as the intensive use of raw materials and the production of new waste. New solutions need to be thought and atmospheric water supplies such as fog or dew water represent alternative sources still largely untapped.
Within the Living in a Bottle project, this research looks at computational design workflows and Additive Manufacturing as tools that can play a role in mitigating these risks, while transforming the perception of plastic waste from burden to construction material. Moreover, 3d-printing represents a flexible fabrication technology that could play a relevant educational and developing role in growing communities. The goal of the research is to propose a solution for a mono-material building envelope component designed to enable and maximize atmospheric water collection in developing countries. The design aims to be adaptable to different climatic scenarios and easy to replicate locally. The task is approached systematically by defining all necessary functions and exploring the best strategy for each of them. Every step is performed considering both the optimization of functionality and 3d-printability. Functions are then combined in one element which is prototyped and tested. Computer simulations for the city of Rabat (Morocco), show that the combination of a dew and fog collector in one component would reduce by half the surface required to fulfill the water needs of one person. A feasibility analysis is also performed and the price of one module is estimated. The result is comparable to the cost of standard solutions in the field of atmospheric water harvesting and represents therefore an interesting achievement in the development of such technology.

The following report is an explanation to the process of identifying a relevant thesis topic, the literature research, design methodology and validation of the design task at hand. The literature research expands on the construction industry, PET as a single use waste material, Additive manufacturing, Fused Deposition modeling and the design of an internal living module as reasons to further explore this project. As problems to be further explored, Transform-ability of mono-material printing, Design for manufacturing and assembly, Research by prototype, validation methodologies and the feasibility of FDM will be addressed. The above arguments will be followed by the problem statement and research questions described in detail. The design task will be identified and the design methodology specifically built to suit this design task will be explored in depth under the topic Methodology used for thesis validation. Each section will have a small summary of findings and relevance to this thesis explained. A few topics such as climatic conditions, sustainability, PET as a material were not explored further than that described in the literature research as they are already extensively proven topics of research. One of the main outcomes of this thesis is that of an open source system of using additive manufacturing as manufacturing technique. Through an exemplary design, this project explores a physical trial and error evolution of a design without using predictive modeling. A system for anyone to evolve their design, prototype and manufacture without the need for experts could be suggested as a new wave for the maker movement; Mass customization for the mass. A chosen design task will be an exemplary result following the careful incorporation of the methodology designed specifically for this thesis topic. The methodology allows for possibilities of being adapted for similar design tasks in the future. The validation process of this design task will be heavily driven on functional and aesthetic bases. Prototyping will be used to validate the criteria directing this design task. Conclusive points to be taken away from the research will be identified towards the end of this report along with the reflections based on methodology, research and design process. A further list of recommendations to extend this topic of research will be identified and suggested for future reference as design points. All literature review references and any other references have been included.

A proposal is made on how to design and create an openable surface in a mono material 3D printed tiny house that consists out of recycled PET.

The preservation and restoration of intricate stucco ornaments, which are part of our collect cultural Heritage, is under threat due to a diminishing number of skilled restoration plasterers. The highly physically demanding- and labour intensive nature of this work makes it unsustainable for the human body and advocates for a more sustainable alternative restoration method for the future. Digital Fabrication has the potential to offer such an alternative method. While 3D scanning, digital repair and 3D printing are all proven technologies, stucco ornament restoration often requires an on site fabrication solution directly onto a ceiling or wall due to the brittle nature of prefab stucco elements. The research explores how an in-situ 3D printing technique can be developed for the restoration of stucco ornaments by focussing on three main topics: 1) developing gypsum-based 3D printing materials, which are compatible to gypsum ceilings and comply with criteria for extrusion based 3D printing; 2) Designing and prototyping 3D printing tools including an extruder and material delivery system; 3) Conceptualizing a Restoration Robot Platform with which the developed printing material can be used with the developed 3D printing tools, for on site stucco ornament restoration. The insights gained from the development of the printing material and printing process are integrated into digital fabrication software used in practise, through a proposed plug-in and workflow.

During the last few years, Virtual Reality (VR) technology has evolved at an impressive pace. The newest VR systems offer a high level of visual realism and accurate interaction with the virtual environment through spatially tracked controllers. This technology is increasingly being applied in many professions, but in architecture and urbanism the use of VR was mostly restricted to visualization purposes. Meanwhile, an increasing amount of (3D) data becomes available which is now mostly visualised with 2D screens, while there exists a plenitude of complex urban problems that could potentially benefit from the use of this data. Also, our cities are still mainly designed with traditional design methods such as sketches on paper and unintuitive CAD software. These methods are viewed on 2D screens, often from bird’s eye view, while our cities are in 3D and experienced from eye level perspective. Designing in VR could potentially bring the designer on eye level and connect the design with the world of available 3D data, offering a new, intuitive design method: 3D hand movements.
This project focuses on the application of VR in an urban design process with current state of the art VR hard- and software. A design area was converted into a 3D virtual environment, a VR design tool was created and then used to create multiple design variants in VR. The lessons that were learned during this research form a first step towards new design methods, making use of the possibilities of software and immersion offered by VR.

This research paper is a TU Delft Master’s thesis for graduation track in the field of Building Technology. Its main theme, digital manufacturing of reinforced concrete structures, has already been studied/researched by many other enthusiasts; but they adopted approaches mainly based on the digital production of formworks or 3D printing of concrete. None or very few re-searchers have tried tackling this topic by only investigating the reinforcement production methods. Reinforcement is an essen-tial part of any concrete structure and neglecting its role in de-veloping techniques of digital manufacturing concrete structure makes the technique unreliable. Therefore this report ap-proached this topic according to the suitable production tech-niques for reinforcement structures of freeform concrete struc-tures. Various techniques and concepts in production of rein-forcement structures have been designed and one chosen. This chosen concept got developed into its last minute details as well as its assemblage process got demonstrated on a freeform wall structure.
All the stages are also fully explained providing a source of in-spiration for anyone interested in the topic to employ the pre-sented research in creation of other possible systems.
Those research related to production technique which is done by the researcher of this report, can also be employed in other fields such as lattice mesh structure production or 3D printing of carbon fibers.