Masonry Workshop at ETH Zurich

A stunning Catalan free-form vault has been designed and build by students during a one week workshop organised by Prof. Deplazes and Prof. Block from ETH Zurich. RhinoVAULT has been used for the design of the complex compression-only shape. For details, visit the homepage of the BLOCK Research Group.

RhinoVAULT Beta released!

The BLOCK Research Group is pleased to announce the pre-release of rhinoVAULT Beta V0.2! The current version is now freely available for download. The Rhinoceros® Plug-In emerged from current research on structural form finding based on the Thrust-Network-Approach to intuitively create and explore compression-only structures.

”The resistant virtues of the structure that we seek depend on their form; it is through their form that they are stable, not because of an awkward accumulation of material. There is nothing more noble and elegant from an intellectual viewpoint than this: to resist through form.” - Eladio Dieste, 1996

Matthias Rippmann
Lorenz Lachauer
Philippe Block

RhinoVAULT Workshop in Innsbruck

Invited by Günther H. Filz and Rupert W. Maleczek, the Block Research Group will give a workshop at koge, University of Innsbruck, Austria, as part of the Ringvorlesung 2012. Prof. Philippe Block, Matthias Rippmann and myself will lead a design workshop using RhinoVAULT, a plug-in for Rhino, that allows for the intuitive design of compression-only shapes, offering a maximum control of the geometry.

3D Printed Stone Vault

At the Design Modelling Symposium in Berlin, a 3d printed vault prototype, designed by Norbert Palz and Ricardo Gomes, has been exibited.


The vaulted structure has been additively fabricated using the d-shape techology, it is 3d printed from an artificial sandstone.


The prototype has been designed using RhinoVAULT.