University of Stuttgart unveils woven pavilion based on beetle shells, from dezeen:

A robotically woven carbon-fibre pavilion based on the lightweight shell encasing the wings and abdomen of a beetle is the second structure revealed this week from the team of architects and engineers at the University of Stuttgart.

Like the Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall unveiled on Tuesday, the ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion 2013-14 is a structure fabricated using a custom-built system of robotics, which were here used to create a series of modular fibre-composite components.

The project was developed by academics from University of Stuttgart’s Institute for Computational Design (ICD)and Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE), who have previously collaborated a pavilion based on a lobster’s exoskeleton and a structure modelled on a sea urchin’s skeleton.

“The project presents a novel approach to fibre-composite structures in architecture,” explained ICD researcher and team member Marshall Prado.

“It is based on the development of a robotic fabrication process for modular, double layered fibre composite structures, which reduces the required formwork to a minimum while maintaining a large degree of geometric freedom. This enabled the transfer of functional principles of natural lightweight systems to architectural structures,” he said….