“At the boundary of engineering, computer science, and architecture, I collaborate with leading design practices to conduct research in digital innovation for a circular built environment.”

Circular Engineering for Architecture

Catherine De Wolf is director of the Circular Engineering for Architecture (CEA) Lab at ETH Zurich. The lab develops research on matching reused architectural materials & projects through digitalization for circularity. Exploring how we can adopt digital technologies in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, the lab's research analyses how we can shift towards a circular paradigm. Buildings are complex, multi- variant problems addressed by numerous stakeholders. Automating reuse of materials in architecture can fill this gap by connecting actors across the value chain. We work with digital innovations that have been applied in other sectors (e.g. Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms in social media; robotic manufacturing in the car and aerospace industry; blockchain technology in financing) to augment the skills of AEC players towards connecting the end-of-life of one building with the start-of-life of another. Catherine is a faculty member of the AI Center at ETH Zurich and the co-founder of the Digital Circular Economy (DiCE) Lab at TU Delft and ETH Zurich.

CEA

Digital Fabrication

As part of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) on digital fabrication, we analyse where robotic fabrication and additive/subtractive manufacturing could play a role to enable the dis- and re-assembly of buildings with reused materials.

Artificial Intelligence

We use Artificial Intelligence – and more specifically computer vision – to predict when and where building materials will become available for reuse. We apply Big Data Analytics on various data sources to detect demolition and renovation projects.

Reality Capture

We explore photogrammetry and LiDAR scanning and to make point clouds of buildings set for demolition in order to make a material passport to create a matchmaking service connecting supply and demand of reused materials, which we plug into our computational design algorithms.

Previous Research

Catherine De Wolf conducted her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and also worked at University of Technology Delft (TU Delft), the Swiss Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Cambridge. She obtained a dual degree in civil engineering and architecture from the University of Brussels (VUB / ULB). Her research focused on embodied carbon and life cycle design.

Life Cycle Assessment

Many challenges arise when conducting a life cycle assessment (LCA) of reused building materials. Read more about work at EPFL tackling these challenges.

Low Carbon Structural Design

De Wolf’s PhD dissertation defined low carbon pathways for structural design by creating the database of embodied Quantity outputs.

Life Cycle Design

In four-dimensional (4D) design, the “time” parameter, i.e. the complete life cycle of a building, is taken into account to support design for reuse.

Publications

Find more publications on ResearchGate