Construction project management requires frequent inspections to ensure the quality and progress of the construction work. Multiple stakeholders are involved in the inspection process during the project lifecycle. Some project stakeholders, such as architects, owners, structural engineers are involved with multiple construction projects at a time and are responsible to conduct timely inspection and monitoring tasks. This paper studies the potential of Virtual Reality (VR) and robotics for real-time remote inspection. The benefits and challenges of using VR for construction inspection and monitoring were identified and ranked through a systematic literature review. The top 5 benefits were found to be enhanced collaboration, realistic and immersive visualization, remote presence, reduction in inspection time, and support for decision-making. The top 5 challenges identified in this study include low- resolution displays, limited integration with existing technologies (such as BIM), causing disorientation and dizziness for the user, cost of adoption, and job site internet access limitations. Finally, a new approach was investigated for using VR to enable an immersive experience in remote inspection with an inspector assistant robot for real-time remote construction inspection. The experimental investigation verified the identified benefits and challenges.
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This content will become publicly available on August 1, 2024
The Site of Ornament
Historically, ornament has provided a tether to cultural meaning in the built world. Ornament is tied to specific
cultural attributes. As an integral part of the construction, ornament negotiates with the culture from which it
emerges. It is a built grammar, but it is also expressive of its own making as well as the society that shaped
it. Modernity has largely reversed this connection with some important exceptions. There is a strong history of
architects developing space through the design of the construction that provides what Louis Sullivan would
call an “organic” link to the ornament that emerges, and this nexus of structure and form becomes the “site”
of the ornament. Luigi Nervi’s ferro-cement shells and Frank Lloyd Wright’s textile blocks are two salient
examples that have, through necessity or interest, developed details that generate entire projects, which then
generate new projects as that construction/detail is refined and builds on the culture that inspired it. Ornament
is thus a negotiation between the built artifact and the meaning of its “ornamented” expression.
As architects, we now operate in a world of off-the-shelf selected components. This attitude, combined with
the integration of building components into BIM programs, has made the architect a selector/consumer rather
than a designer of the construction, making ornament a part of this selection process – i.e., decoration. The
research project Woven Blocks is an attempt to reexamine the way in which architects can shape space
through the design of the construction itself. Pulling from Frank Lloyd Wright’s textile block system, Woven
Blocks imagines a 3D-printed block capable of taking advantage of a self-supporting system of enclosure that
can be “programmed” with function, take on aspects of the context it resides in, and reflect the nature of its
making. The project is the design of the manufacturing process as well as its end-product. This enables the
building material to respond directly to its program, shaping space/meaning in potentially a more “plastic” way.
This paper is first a consideration of architects thinking through construction, then a reflection on the cultural
implication of their production. The site of ornament also implies a shift in perception from the textile patterns
of specific cultures found in ceramics, clothing, wall mats, or flooring onto the building surface and into its
lashing to the frame and the integration of its various services/systems. This lens will serve to frame the
research around the project Woven Blocks, examining the efforts of the authors to shape the process of
construction as a place from which ornament can emerge and meaning can be rediscovered.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2229267
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10469182
- Publisher / Repository:
- Proceedings of the 2023 Building Technology Educators’ Society Conference: Beyond the Artifact
- Date Published:
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 317-324
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- ["3D Printing","Additive Manufacturing","Frank Lloyd Wright","Ornament","Construction"]
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Scottsdale/Arcosanti, Arizona, USA
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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