Designing Out Waste in Construction: Case Studies in Reducing Formwork for Concrete Casting

The construction industry contributes to an estimated one-third of world waste. Design is identified as the leading cause of waste in construction, but how can architects use technology to reduce and minimise waste? Typical waste reduction strategies at the design phase utilised standardisation, modulation, and optimisation methods within a controlled prefabricated environment to remove complication and complexity in construction. While during construction, reuse, recycling, and upcycling are seen as the best practices. In concrete technology, the latter is well developed through material science research. However, the waste outflow is least understood concerning manufacturing the building components – the research questions whether waste can be reduced at the source during fabrication. The chapter examines two case studies using advanced manufacturing and robotics to investigate alternative methods to reduce and eliminate formwork, particularly concerning complex geometries. The research identifies replacing or substituting existing materials and practices using biomaterial and automation through robotics as alternative strategies to minimise construction waste. It highlights an emerging construction paradigm where architects shift their attitude towards waste as ‘unavoidable’ to one that could be actively designed or reduced at source through advanced manufacturing. While design activity is often blamed for the cause of waste, the paper proposed that coupling manufacturing parameters and waste outflow could benefit the early design phase, allowing build-in visibility and awareness of waste by-products correlating to design form.