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This pavilion at London's V&A Museum will be built by robots to resemble construction patterns of beetles

This pavilion at London's V&A Museum will be built by robots to resemble construction patterns of beetles

As part of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Engineering Season in London, a pavilion constructed by robots is set to steal the show.

The installation, titled Elytra Filament Pavilion, was designed by German foursome Achim Menges, Thomas Auer, Moritz Dörstelmann, and Jan Knippers. It will be the group’s first ever public commission in the U.K.

The Engineering Season, in its inaugural year, will include a major exhibition for the esteemed Danish-British engineer, Ove Arup.

The pavilion will kickstart the season and will look at the emergence of robotics being used in architecture, engineering, and construction. The structure will be constructed by robots and resemble construction principles found in nature—in particular, the forewing shells of flying beetles known as elytra.

As a result, an undulating canopy will be formed from a compact carbon fiber cell structure. During the season, the pavilion will demonstrate its adaptivity, responding to data on structural behavior and circulatory patterns within the V&A’s John Madejski Garden. This will be made possible by the implementation of real-time sensors in the carbon fibers themselves.

The V&A Engineering Season will highlight the importance of engineering in our daily lives and consider engineers as the “unsung heroes” of design, who play a vital and creative role in the creation of our built environment.

Visitors to the exhibition, can see the pavilion on display beginning May 18th while some may be lucky enough to witness the pavilion’s cells being fabricated by a Kuka robot (pictured) during the season at select moments.

In a press release, Achim Menges, said: “Remember the impact that the first industrial revolution here in England had on architecture, as strikingly expressed in the Victorian Greenhouse? With Elytra: Filament Pavilion, we aim to offer a glimpse of the transformative power of the fourth industrial revolution currently underway, and the way it again challenges established modes of design, engineering and making.”

The pavilion will be on show until November 6, 2016, with admission to the garden being free. Meanwhile, the exhibition Engineering the World: Ove Arup and the Philosophy of Total Design runs from June 18 through November 6, 2016. Tickets will go on sale in April 2016 and admission will be £7.

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