A unique installation is taking shape at London's Victoria and Albert Museum that explores the impact of emerging robotic technologies on architectural design and engineering.

Inspired by a lightweight construction principle found in nature—the fibrous structures of the forewing shells of flying beetles known as elytra—the Elytra Filament Pavilion is a canopy of tightly woven carbon fiber cells created using a novel robotic production process. A joint effort of experimental architect Achim Menges, designer Moritz Dörstelmann, structural engineer Jan Knippers and climate engineer Thomas Auer, Elytra’s components were fabricated by a robot at the University of Stuttgart and assembled onsite in the museum's John Madejski Garden.

The pavilion will grow and change its configuration over the course of its six-month exhibition. Image credit: ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London.The robotic fabrication technique, developed by the University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Computational Design (ICD) and Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE), involves a novel way of winding composite materials by a robot arm. The winding method was designed to harness the material properties of carbon fibers to give them strength as woven structural components. A series of individual cell-like modules were used to create the pavilion’s distinctive shape.

Elytra’s canopy is made up of 40 hexagonal component cells that weigh, on average, 45 kg apiece and require approximately three hours to fabricate. The cells and the pavilion’s seven supporting columns were created by a computer-programmed Kuka robot in a four-month construction process at ICD’s Fabrication Hall in Stuttgart. To make each component, the robot wound resin-soaked glass and carbon fibers onto a hexagonal scaffold before hardening.

Its final form of densely knit fibers reflects the changing stress conditions determined through structural simulation and testing carried out in advance by ITKE. According to its designers, this enables an exceptionally lightweight structure, weighing less than 9 kg per square meter, which equals 2.5 metric tons for the entire pavilion.

The pavilion will grow and change its configuration over the course of its six-month exhibition in response to anonymous data on how visitors use and move under the canopy. This, as well as structural data, is captured by real-time sensors installed in its canopy fibers. Throughout the exhibit's duration, the data will be mapped and made available online. On June 17 and 18 and September 22, visitors will be able to see the pavilion evolve as new components are fabricated live in the garden by a Kuka robot.