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IntCDC Constructive Conversations / Konrad Graser
October 21 | 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Adoption of digital fabrication to AEC praxis – what can we learn from the users?
date
Tuesday, 21 October 2025 | 17:30 – 19:00 p.m.
speaker
Dr. Konrad Graser
Lecturer in digital construction processes and management
Zurich University of Applied Sciences
location
Institute for Leightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK),
Paffenwaldring 14,
70569 Stuttgart Vaihingen Campus
This lecture is part of the IntCDC Constructive Conversations. Please register or log-in to your account to access the event credentials.
abstract
Even as the AEC industry continues to struggle with a low rate of digitalization and lagging productivity gains, the divide continues to grow between the rapid technology advances recently made in digital fabrication (dfab) research and the slow pace of adoption of dfab technologies in AEC praxis. The AEC industry is struggling to adopt dfab because its organizational and socio-technical implications for projects and stakeholders are not yet well understood.
Therefore, a significant gap has opened between the research-stage technologies available for adoption and those actually used broadly in the construction of today’s built environment. Despite this apparent gap, little research has looked at how dfab technologies can be effectively integrated in the complex process of planning and constructing fully functional buildings. Addressing this central problem requires an inquiry from a two-fold perspective: first, on the changes dfab requires in the organizational principles and practices of AEC; second, on how emerging dfab technologies and processes might need to adapt to better serve the needs of AEC praxis.
Konrad Graser
Konrad Graser is a professor of digital construction processes and management at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW). He has collaborated on several full-scale demonstrators of digital fabrication in construction, including as project manager and lead architect of DFAB HOUSE, a digital construction demonstrator project, and as collaborator on HiLo, a digitally-enabled lightweight structure, both by the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research Digital Fabrication at ETH Zurich; and as project coordinator of the White Tower in Mulegns CH, currently the world’s tallest 3D printed structure. Konrad obtained his master’s degree in architecture at ETH Zurich in 2004.
He has worked at leading architecture and engineering practices in the USA and Europe, among them SHoP Architects in New York and Werner Sobek Stuttgart, where he focused on the implementation of digital tools and technologies in the design and construction of complex projects. In 2023, Konrad obtained his doctorate at the Chair of Innovative and Industrial Construction at ETH Zurich on the topic of socio-technical processes underlying the adoption of digital construction technologies in AEC practice.