HiLo Unit
Experimental office space at the EMPA campus, Switzerland.
HiLo is a research and innovation unit designed as a collaborative and flexible workspace, built on the NEST building of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) in Dübendorf, Switzerland. The aim of the HiLo unit is to demonstrate how embodied and operational energy in buildings can be drastically reduced by combining lightweight concrete structures, appropriate fabrication and construction methods with low-energy building systems.
The most visible innovation presented in HiLo is the roof, which is a carbon-fibre-mesh-reinforced, concrete sandwich shell structure. With a surface area of approximately 160 m² and covering an open space of roughly 120 m², the HiLo roof has an anticlastic doubly curved shape and is supported around the perimeter in five locations on two levels. The roof was built with a cable-net and fabric formwork system. It consists of a reusable steel scaffolding, a set of timber boundary beams, a steel cable-net, fabric shuttering, and edge clamps.
Location: Dübendorf, Switzerland Year: 2021
Credits
- Block Research Group — ETH Zürich
- Architecture and Building Systems Group — ETH Zürich
- ROK Architects, Bürgin Creations, Dr. Schwartz Consulting AG, Marti AG