Marta Malé-Alemany is Associate Professor of Digital Production

AUAS's Robot Lab

Anyone who wants to know what drives Marta Malé-Alemany (1971) would do well to take a look at the Robot Lab of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, an environment she envisioned and founded in 2017. In this space, with multiple robotic arms set up in front of meters-high windows overlooking the city, she spends most of her days. Always busy and on the move, never in a fixed spot, invariably surrounded by researchers, students, teachers and professionals.

Robot Lab as an urban factory

The associate professor conceives her lab as an urban factory: a place in the middle of the city, where students, researchers and companies can work together on solutions for urgent societal challenges. As such, it is a place that is strongly focused on the outside world, on questions that are ultimately connected to the built environment all around it, and its inhabitants.

'You can think of the Robot Lab as the mother ship,' she says. 'This is where we embrace future challenges with multiple partners and develop new technologies and processes. Here, we also aim to inspire both current practices and the next generation of professionals who are meant to improve the world we see through our windows. That interplay between education, research and practice is the DNA of the Robot Lab.'

Advancing the circular economy

One of its spearheads is advancing the circular economy, by giving discarded materials a second life, powered by digital production. For years they have been working on reusing waste wood, harvested from manufacturing surplus or demolition projects.

'Usually this wood is burned or turned into particleboard, because it is not efficient to process it manually,' she explains. 'With raw materials becoming increasingly scarce and CO2 emission goals, this is no longer sustainable. At the Robot Lab, we are investigating how this can be done differently, finding impactful solutions to reuse valuable wood through data driven design, robotic production and smart factory approaches.’

Reception desk for the Johan Cruyff Arena

On several occasions in recent years, Malé-Alemany and her team showed what a (digital) circular future could look like. On their project for the Johan Cruyff Arena, they established how digital production technologies could support and enhance this transition.

Robots in the lab could 3D scan pieces of leftover wood, and other properties such as color, size and weight would also be stored in a database. Following an algorithmic approach, researchers generated a unique design based on the wood available in such database.

Circular Wood for the Neighborhood

In the Circular Wood for the Neighborhood project, they explored how wood released from housing renovations could be transformed into circular products or community structures for their tenants. They developed several case studies, at various scales: a coffee table, a system of room dividers, and a larger outdoor structure.

'The idea was to show that after a building renovation, housing corporations could make use of their materials, giving harvested wood back to the tenants. For instance in the form of a new circular object for their own home or a community structure for their neighborhood', Malé-Alemany says. 'Making physical prototypes in the lab is our way to showcase the potential of digital production for scaling up circular applications, in a very tangible way.'

Residual wood from hospitality industry

For the follow-up project, Circular Wood 4.0, the associate professor sought collaboration with the hospitality industry. 'On average, a hospitality business replaces its entire interior every seven years. So there is a lot to gain if we create valuable applications from residual wood, given that it is such a large sector,' she says. 'With this research we are helping the wood industry to upcycle their waste materials, while seeding new grounds for Smart Industry applications for the circular economy.'

Important role for students

As in all projects, students play an important role. For example, they designed and produced new objects for hostel chain Stayokay, made of parts from old bunk beds. The results range from a chess table with 3D printed chess pieces, to a lighting fixture constructed from small wooden elements.

'Through assignments like this, students learn to work with robots and digital design and production techniques,' Malé-Alemany explains. 'While doing so, they get acquainted with the relevant questions that arise in the work field throughout our research questions. For Stayokay, this project illuminates the possibilities for reusing their own discarded furniture or interiors, with a sustainable purpose.'

Experimentation as a common thread

Experimenting with digital production technologies has been the common thread in Malé-Alemany's life since her student days. During her master's degree in Advanced Architectural Design in New York in the late 1990s, she was the first generation to learn to design with the computer. ‘The whole architectural world was turned upside down because suddenly it was no longer clear who had authorship,’ she recalls.

Design tutor

After her studies, Malé-Alemany became a design tutor at various universities in the United States, Barcelona and London. In the years that followed, her urge to experiment and innovate emerged once again. For example in 2009, with a teaching challenge that she coined as ‘(FAB)Bots’, she was already exploring the possibilities of deploying autonomous robots to build on location, with fabrication processes involving found materials.

She also has been the driving force in setting up digital fabrication labs at multiple schools, including the renowned Fab Lab Barcelona at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia.

Exploring 3D printing

She also taught at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London (2009-2012). Her students were the first to explore how to hack existing CNC machines to transform them into custom printers, to explore processes like 3D printing with concrete or clay. Many of these early ideas seeded a number of innovative digital production applications in practice, such as the world's first 3D printed steel bridge, which opened in Amsterdam in 2021.

Research and practice

In the years that followed, Malé-Alemany moved to the Netherlands for love. After earning her PhD, she joined the AUAS in 2016, where she shifted this experimental academic work to undertake practice-based research. 'It is very satisfying to be able to bring results into practice while we work on urgent questions. I can now make an immediate impact on society.'

MoBot: mobile mini-factory

So too with new developments, like the MoBot. This mobile mini-factory fits into a shipping container and can therefore be set up at any desired location. For example, in a neighborhood where large-scale renovation is taking place.

'With the MoBot we can work on location to reuse waste wood from a neighborhood. Together with residents, we can codesign and create objects for the community, while we train the people involved in a living lab setting. Now that the circular transition is gaining a foothold, I am convinced that this is the next step: bringing technology where materials are harvested, involving direct stakeholders and local people to build local applications, making a difference for the environment and for society.'