VRoxel

Circular construction scenarios aim for comprehensive reuse of building elements. Only maximal reuse can help to reduce the sourcing of raw materials and eliminate energy consuming manufacturing and recycling processes. This requires the replacement of traditional construction techniques with technologies using materials and products that are designed for disassembly and reassembly. Two main strategies aim for maximal reuse. 1. Modularisation towards standardised kits of parts and 2. Discretisation towards small generic building blocks. Discretisation, a LEGO-like approach, was scientifically introduced as so-called digital materials (DM) at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) in the 2000s [1]. While developed in an engineering context, DMs have also been picked up in architectural research [2–4]. Considered a discrete form of additive manufacturing (AM), a recent CBA paper has shown how DMs can be automatically assembled on an architectural scale through hierarchic robotic systems [5]. Current design systems (CAAD, BIM, parametric) are not fit for handling millions of elements, necessary for DM design on an architectural scale. A novel design environment for DMs should offer adequate design strategies, considering architectural objects such as walls and columns as large assemblies of building blocks. To fill this gap, we propose VRoxel, an immersive design environment for discrete assemblies in virtual reality (VR), capable of designing intuitively with millions of building blocks. The paper presents the underlying design paradigm and the software architecture of VRoxel. It illustrates its use in the context of academic design studios, workshops, and a demonstrator, thereby introducing the H-Block DM.