In the Swiss Alpine village of Mulegns, a bone-white tower rises 30 meters from the valley floor. Skeletal in its design, Tor Alva is the tallest 3D-printed structure in the world—each component fabricated by robots in Zurich, then trucked 175 kilometers for assembly. It is a fitting symbol for a moment when digital tools are fundamentally changing what’s possible in the built world. And it made for a natural centerpiece at the Future of Construction symposium, held last month at ETH Zurich—the storied Swiss science and technology university where many of those tools were invented.
The symposium was sponsored this year by Bentley Systems, the infrastructure engineering software company, and put on by the Center for Augmented Computational Design in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction at the Digital Fabrication Lab at ETH. The event brought together engineers, architects, academics, and technologists to explore how robotics, artificial intelligence, and extended reality are reshaping the way we design and build. Attendees were treated to a bus tour to Tor Alva—a short trip into the mountains that doubled as a live demonstration of just how far digital fabrication has come.
There’s synergy between Bentley and ETH. As the global company behind some of the industry’s most widely used engineering and digital twin tools, Bentley has a direct stake in the questions ETH researchers are trying to answer: How to design increasingly complex structures more efficiently? How to close the gap between a digital model and the physical world? And how to ensure that AI can access the data it needs?
“Bentley…have been very generous in supporting the event and have enabled us to bring it to the next level,” said Russell Loveridge, digital fabrication director at the National Center For Competence in Research (NCCR) at ETH Zurich. “The work they are doing across our field is impressive, and with Bentley establishing a presence in Zurich, we look forward to a long and close partnership.”
From Gaudi to Gravis
Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família cathedral in Barcelona.The event was in part a retrospective, taking stock of the advances since the 2014 launch of ETH’s NCCR Digital Fabrication research center. Renowned New Zealand architect Mark Burry delivered one of the keynotes, tracing his decades-long work on Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família cathedral in Barcelona. In the late 1980s, Burry and his team deployed computer-controlled milling machines to cut and carve stone into the complex geometric shapes that Gaudí’s design demanded—one of the earliest uses of robotic tools in architecture. The external work on the cathedral is now complete; the digital tools have also come a long way since.
That arc—from early experiment to mainstream capability—was visible throughout the symposium. Zurich-based startup Gravis Robotics showcased its AI-powered autonomous bulldozers and earth-moving equipment. Greg Demchak, Bentley’s vice president of emerging technologies, had a ready analogy: “It’s like Waymo, but for construction vehicles.”
One keynote that clearly landed was from Menna El-Assady, head of ETH’s IVIA Lab, whose research maps the frontier of human-AI collaboration. The most productive territory, she argued, lies between what AI can fully automate and what humans clearly do better—a middle ground where humans and machines work together. “The human and the AI together come up with novel solutions that neither would maybe come up with independently,” Demchak says.
The Data Wall
That collaborative vision has a practical obstacle, and Demchak devoted his own session to it. He has a chart he keeps returning to—it looks like a saw blade. Every tooth represents a project handover, from design to engineering to construction to operations. Every handover means data loss. “We all have this appetite to bring down silos, but this industry is not vertically integrated like other industries such as aerospace or automotive,” he told the audience. “I’ve been using how neurons and neurotransmitters work as a metaphor to address this. What if the silo, or gap, is not the issue, but the lack of APIs that would enable information to have lossless transmission?”
“What if the silo, or gap, is not the issue, but the lack of APIs that would enable information to have lossless transmission?” Demchak told his ETH audience.AI makes the problem more urgent. The productivity gains that the industry needs—synthesizing project history, catching design conflicts early, automating documentation—require AI agents that can see the data they’re working with. That means open systems and open standards. Demchak pointed to Model Context Protocols, an emerging open-source standard sometimes called the “USB-C of AI,” as the connective tissue that lets AI agents plug into the engineering software and databases where infrastructure data actually lives. “Let’s make data open and accessible,” he said. “Let’s work to have all of our software operating with these open-source protocols in order to enable agentic workflows—this kind of co-design involving AI and humans.”
Beauty at Scale
Step back from the plumbing, and Demchak’s larger argument is almost romantic. Unlike the uniform prefabrication of the 20th century, today’s robotic and AI tools can produce elaborate, finely detailed structures at greater scale and lower cost.
“If the cost of quality and complexity goes down because we use AI and robotics,” he says, “my hope is that engineers and architects—the builders of the future—feel empowered to reimagine our urban landscapes.” His shorthand: “We can bring beauty back into even the most boring of things.”
NXT Up
Demchak used the Zurich symposium to announce Bentley’s NXT Activate, a $3 million accelerator for startups building AI, digital twin, and data-driven solutions for the built environment. The 16-week program, launching in the fall, offers up to $200,000 in investment along with mentorship from industry veterans. It’s looking for ideas that push the frontier—combining reality capture with construction simulation, building AI interfaces on top of existing tools, or developing the next generation of robotic construction equipment.
“Robots are going to be huge,” Demchak says. “They’re going to operate through a combination of every type of AI model—computer vision, large language models, diffusion models. The idea that we might help build the next generation of machines to build our roads and our buildings—I think that’s a good investment.”
FAQ:
Tor Alva is a striking, bone-white tower that rises 30 meters in the Swiss Alpine village of Mulegns, making it the tallest 3D-printed structure in the world. Instead of traditional construction methods, each skeletal component was fabricated by robots in Zurich and then trucked 175 kilometers for assembly.
Model Context Protocols function as the “USB-C of AI,” serving as the open-source connective tissue that lets AI agents plug directly into engineering software and databases where infrastructure data lives. By making data open and accessible, these protocols enable agentic workflows, catching design conflicts early and allowing humans and AI to co-design effectively.
NXT Activate is a $3 million startup accelerator looking to fund the next generation of AI, digital twin, and data-driven solutions for the built environment. Launching in the fall, the 16-week program offers up to $200,000 in investment and mentorship for startups pushing the frontier of reality capture, construction simulation, and robotic equipment.
