Urban Blocks: Redefining Public Spaces with Sustainable Design

Yiqing Wang and Shunyi Yang's Award-Winning Urban Furniture Prototype

The inspiration behind Urban Blocks stems from a desire to reduce material waste and increase manufacturing efficiency. By implementing low-carbon concrete material, optimizing essential structural forms, and adopting a robotics fabrication system, Urban Blocks has achieved a 30% reduction in overall material waste and an 80% increase in manufacturing efficiency. This innovative approach offers more freedom to bespoke forms and advanced parametric designs.

What sets Urban Blocks apart is its adaptability. The urban furniture prototype can easily adjust to any built environment. Its form can be positioned and combined for different purposes, such as single benches, double-side benches, sofas, planters, and variations in-between. The geometry and scale of the mobile units allow for easy assembly to fit the human body. This design aims to empower communities by prefabricating urban blocks and opening up countless possibilities to populate public spaces.

The realization of Urban Blocks involves a combination of prefab units, low-carbon 3D printed concrete, autonomous manufacture, robotics fabrication, modular design, and bespoke parametric design. The units are made in factories using sustainable 3D printed concrete with an autonomous robotics fabrication system and transported to sites. People can then position them and create different compositions from the blocks to create adaptive urban furniture and landscape elements.

The team behind Urban Blocks, RAB LAB, envisions the future of automated mass production using new sustainable materials like 3D-printed concrete. With prefab units and easy assemblies, designers assign part of the authorship to local communities, creating more resilient and flexible urban interventions. The urban furniture prototypes can easily adapt to any built environment. With low carbon 3D printed concrete technology, structural algorithm optimization, and the robotics fabrication system, Urban Blocks' form can be positioned and combined for different purposes single bench, double-side bench, sofas, planters, and variations in-between. The geometry and scale of the mobile units permit easier assemblies to fit the human body. This design aims to empower the communities by prefabricating urban blocks and to open up countless possibilities to populate our public spaces.

The design's excellence has been recognized with a Silver A' Design Award, rewarded to top-of-the-line, creative, and professionally remarkable designs that illustrate outstanding expertise and innovation. These designs, admired for their strong technical characteristics and splendid artistic skill, showcase a remarkable level of excellence and introduce positive feelings, amazement, and wonder.