STF#9 - 2025: Presentations
3DStairDesigner: Automated Workflow for Complex Concrete 3D-Printed Stairs
Scawo3D
Timo Harboe ApS
Building large-scale freeform reinforced concrete staircases has always been a challenge. Traditional methods rely on labour-intensive wooden or EPS formwork, making many designs too costly. This can be changed with Selective Paste Intrusion (SPI), a new 3D concrete printing technique developed by Scawo3D using a large particle-bed and the geometric freedom that comes with it.
With fabrication no longer restricting the geometry, the computational design process became the bottleneck. Our previous AutoCAD-based solution - initially developed for producing G-codes for CNC-milling EPS formwork blocks - was not viable for the freedom of particle bed 3D printing. Manual 3D modeling rendered scaling up production impossible, leaving the printer underused. To solve this, together with Timo Harboe Zollner, we developed an automated workflow that cuts the time from design to production by 95%. This approach balances automation with intuitive user input, transforming 2D geometry into finely detailed 3D models in minutes. It integrates SubDs, meshes, volumetric modeling, and implicit modeling, achieving in moments what once took days.
Philip Schneider - Philip is Computational & Architectural Design Lead at Scawo3D and founder of Skeno. He studied architecture at TU Munich with a focus on digital fabrication and computational design and specialises in 3D concrete printing by Selective Paste Intrusion at an architectural scale. Since 2022, he has led the design and fabrication of the first projects realised by SPI in academia and industry.
Timo Harboe - Timo is the founder of Timo Harboe ApS and works with automation of geometry. He has a background in structural design and applied computational design. He previously worked at BIG and Ramboll, working on numerous landmark projects around the World. At Ramboll, he worked as Computational Design Lead.
Images ©Scawo3D/Skeno
Websites:
Scawo3D
Skeno
Timo Harboe