Prof. Dr. Robert J. Flatt
Prof. Dr. Robert J. Flatt
Full Professor at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering
Deputy head of Institute for Building Materials
Additional information
Research area
Robert Flatt's research interests span a broad range of areas. Most recently he has engaged in the use of extended reality (XR) in support of the preservation of built heritage. In this highly interdisciplinary area, XR has the potential to facilitate communication among teams of experts from different fields, and also achieve better outreach to society.
In terms of heritage preservations, Robert’s research is anchored in material science, with a specific aim of developing reliable test methods to replace or repair materials. For this, his group seeks to identify critical weathering events onsite, and then reproduce them at higher frequencies in specially designed weather stations.
In parallel to this, Robert’s group is intensely engaged in digital fabrication with concrete, a term they coined as Digital Concrete, where they launched a series of international conferences on the subject in 2018. In this field, a main interest is the synergy between process engineering and the control of both hydration and rheology. Through the highly interdisciplinary National Centre for Competence in Research on Digital Fabrication in Architecture and Construction (NNCR dfab), Robert’s group contributes to many different forms of digital fabrication, including 3D extrusion printing, Digital Casting Systems and Powder Bed Printing. Robert is particularly interested in bringing these developments to an architectural scale and in practice, something that has been taking place through a variety of demonstrators and collaborations with industry.
Contributions to digital fabrication build upon the field Robert has probably most contributed to, which is the science and technology of concrete admixtures. On this front, he is interested in elucidating the complex mechanism of admixtures, which added even in very low amounts, can fundamentally change key properties of concrete: Rheology, Hydration, Durability, Processability and Sustainability. A better understanding of these processes is a key to reducing the carbon footprint of the construction sector, a driving objective for much of the above work.
Robert Flatt has been a full professor of building materials in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering since 2010. He heads the group of physical chemistry of building materials that is engaged in a wide range of highly interdisciplinary topics such as, extended reality for the preservation of built heritage, digital fabrication with concrete, science and technology of concrete admixtures.
Robert initiated and currently leads Design++, the centre for augmented computational design in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC). He launched Design++, aiming to capitalize on new possibilities opened by artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and extended reality (XR), to reduce the environmental footprint of AEC by back-integrating quantitative metrics at early design stages. A cornerstone of Design++ is however to keep the human designer at the center of the process. This can be achieved by exploiting spatial computing, extended reality (XR) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Design++ includes 27 professorships and 7 departments. It is funded both by ETH and by strategic industrial partnerships.
Robert was born in Winterthur in 1969 and is a Swiss and British citizen. He grew up in Lausanne and studied chemical engineering at EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne), where he obtained a Master’s in 1994 and completed a PhD at the Materials Science Department in 1999.
From 1999 to 2002 he was a post-doctoral researcher at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. Before joining ETH Zurich, Robert Flatt was the principal scientist head of inorganic materials in corporate research at Sika Technology AG, a Swiss-based company internationally active in the areas of materials used for sealing, bonding, damping, reinforcing and protecting load-bearing structures in construction and industry.
Honours
| Year | Distinction |
|---|---|
| 2021 | Finalist of the Swiss Concrete Award, from the Swiss Concrete Society (BetonSuisse), for one of the six best concrete construction of the past 4 years. |
| 2019 | Stephen Brunauer Award from the American Ceramic Society, for the best paper published by the Cement Division in 2017 |
| 2019 | Swedish Concrete Award (for extraordinary achievements within the fields of architecture and digital fabrication) |
| 2017 | Concrete Innovation Conference Award for “Mesh Mould” |
| 2016 | Sandmeyer award for industrial and applied chemistry from the Swiss Chemical Society |
| 2016 | Swiss Technology Award 2016 in the category «Inventors» for Mesh Mould |
| 2014 | Concrete Innovation Conference Awards both for “Smart dynamic casting” and “Climbing robot for corrosion inspection and monitoring” |
| 2014 | Elected Fellow of the American Ceramic Society |
| 2012 | Stephen Brunauer Award from the American Ceramic Society, for the best paper published by the Cement Division in 2010 |
| 2007 | Ross C. Purdy award from the American Ceramic Society for the most valuable contribution to ceramic technical literature during the prior year |
| 2003 | RILEM Robert L Hermite Medal for contributions to the understanding of admixtures in cement and concrete |
Course Catalogue
Spring Semester 2025
| Number | Unit |
|---|---|
| 101-0603-01L | Chemistry for Civil Engineers |
| 101-0658-00L | Concrete Material Science |
| 101-6615-10L | Materials in Civil Engineering II |