Tag Archives: 3D-Printed Building

Dubai is building the world’s first 3D-printed office building

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3D printing could cut the building time by 50-70% and labor costs by 50-80%.

While we’ve already seen the emergence of 3D-printed cars, bridges and homes, Dubai has revealed plans to take the technology to new heights by constructing an entire office building. Not only will the exterior walls of the 2,000-square-feet structure be printed, but its interior and furniture will be as well.

In hopes of reducing costs and time by over 50%, the one-story prototype building will be printed layer-by-layer using a 20-foot tall printer with reinforced concrete, gypsum reinforced with glass fiber, and plastic. The project is a collaborative effort between the city of Dubai, Chinese 3D printing pioneer WinSun, as well as architectural and engineering firms Gensler, Thornton Thomasetti and Syska Hennessy.

When all is said and done, officials plan to utilize the office as the temporary headquarters of a recently announced, $136 million “Museum of the Future” that is expected to open in 2017. No stranger to impressive undertakings, Dubai is already home to a number of manmade islands and the world’s tallest building.

UC Berkeley 3D prints an entire 9-foot-tall pavilion

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Researchers have just 3D-printed the first and largest powder-based cement structure.

A team of researchers from UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design has unveiled what they’re calling the “first and largest powdered cement-based, 3D-printed structure.” 

bloomtext

To be clear, this isn’t the first 3D-printed building. If you recall, a Chinese company recently constructed 10 homes in less than day and finished an entire apartment block back in January using 3D-printed parts. Aside from that, a Dutch design firm has already devised a canal house in Amsterdam, a New York architect planned an entire estate and a Minnesota Maker created a castle all through additive manufacturing. However, what sets this project apart is that it was constructed using dry powdered cement, whereas its predecessors were made by extruding wet cement through a nozzle.

The pavilion, which goes by the name Bloom, is 9′ tall, 12′ wide and 12′ deep, and dons a traditional Thai floral motif design on its exterior to allow for natural light to shine through its interior in daylight and glow like a luminary at night. It is composed of 840 custom-printed blocks, each comprised of an iron oxide-free Portland cement polymer, and fabricated using 11 3D Systems printers.

3DP

“This project is the genesis of a realistic, marketable process with the potential to transform the way we think about building a structure,” explained Ronald Rael, Associate Professor of Architecture at UC Berkeley.

What really sets this unique system apart from existing methods of extrusion is that, by using an iron oxide-free Portland cement polymer formulation, Bloom is able to overcome many of the previous limitations to 3D-printed architecture. These constraints include the speed and cost of production, as well as aesthetics and practical applications.

Undoubtedly, 3D printing has transcended well beyond just mere plastic figurines, with today’s advanced printers — many of which powered by Atmel | SMART and AVR microcontrollers — capable of producing everything from functional tools in space to automobiles to entire buildings. After its official unveiling, the Bloom Pavilion was disassembled and shipped to Siam Research and Innovation in Thailand, where it will be exhibited for a few months before touring the world. Those wishing to learn more can head over to the project’s official page here.