Pike Loop, located on the corner of Pike and Division streets in New York, is a 22 metre wall built by entirely by machine, a robot called R-O-B.
Made from 7,000 bricks laid over a one month period in an interweaving pattern, the wall was built by machine as the level of precision involved would have been impossible by human hands.
So why are most bricks laid by people when a robot can do it more precisely? Swiss architects Gramazio & Kohler, who created the piece for New York’s Storefront Art and Architecture, claim brick-laying machines are ‘used for repetitive jobs and architecture is not about repetition.’ Yet despite this claim, they are currently looking into ways of using R-O-B for larger scale construction, starting with a housing project in Zurich.
Pike Loop Time Lapse from Storefront for Art&Architecture on Vimeo.
Image courtesy of Storefront for Art and Architecture on flickr