Archinect - News

World's first 3D-printed school due to rise in Madagascar

2021-02-05T11:21:00-05:00

The world’s first 3D-printed school will soon rise on the African island nation of Madagascar. With a speedy construction timeline and a process that can be easily replicated, the school could become a new model for providing much-needed educational spaces in underresourced communities.

The project was designed by Studio Mortazavi, an architecture firm based in San Francisco and Lisbon, in collaboration with Thinking Huts, a nonprofit aiming to increase global access to education through 3D printing, reports Fast Company.

Moreover, according to Fast Company, architect Amir Mortazavi, outlining the benefits of 3D-printing when there is a shortage of local labor, said: "We can build these schools in less than a week, including the foundation and all the electrical and plumbing work that’s involved. Something like this would typically take months, if not even longer."

ICON teams up with BIG and SEArch+ for Project Olympus, an off-world construction system for the Moon

2020-10-28T17:44:00-04:00

Icon, an Austin, Texas-based developer of construction technologies, received funding to research and develop a space-based construction system that could support future exploration of the moon. It has engaged two architecture firms as partners for the project: Denmark-based BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group and New York City-based SEArch+.

Construction tech developer ICON secures $35M in funding, BIG among investors

2020-08-20T14:02:00-04:00

ICON, developer of advanced construction technologies spanning from robotics, to software, and building materials, has completed a $35M series A funding round of financing led by Moderne Ventures. Among the series A round investors is Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).

ICON. Vulcan 3D Printer Extruding Lavacrete. © Regan Morton Photography

"We believe additive manufacturing will play a transformative role in the future of construction and with our investment and partnership with ICON we can contribute actively to this ongoing transformation," said Bjarke Ingels, BIG's Founder and Creative Director in a statement. "The design industry has become revolutionized through the adoption of Computer Aided Design and Building Information Management...Robotic manufacturing will enable us to eliminate the loss in translation from data to matter and allow us to fabricate homes at great speed, with less waste, and with higher accuracy than today."

ICON. Six Home Project Community First Village. 3D-Print...

Czech 3D-printed floating house is now complete

2020-07-01T11:50:00-04:00

Recently covered on Archinect, PRVOK (Protozoon), a Czech 3D-printed floating house has been completed in České Budějovice. The entire structure, including the interior partitions, was printed in 22 hours and required a total of 17 tons of concrete mixture. PRVK is now going through a series of tests to ensure proper performance. Static pressure, for example, has been tested which concluded that the internal load-bearing wall of the home can withstand a 50-ton load, according to the development team.

Photo by Kateřina Nováková.

Rendering of bathroom. r.

"Despite minor issues caused by the weather, we managed to 3D-print the house successfully. It took us 22 hours in total and we needed 17 tons of custom-developed mixture. As the concrete will take 28 days to harden, we are completing the house, preparing the green roof, floors, all distributions, doors, windows, etc," said sculptor and project leader Michal Trpák in a statement.

Renderings courtesy of Buřinka.

...

This 3D-printed house will be ready for land and water

2020-05-28T19:31:00-04:00

Around the world, private companies and public institutions alike are racing to present "first-of-its-kind" 3D-printed buildings, even entire villages.

In the Czech Republic, a developing company in collaboration with sculptor Michal Trpak is preparing to build, what it calls, the country's first 3D-printed inhabitable house this June.

Called Prvok (Protozoon), the project's building process is promoted as significantly cutting construction time, material waste, carbon emissions, and overall cost when compared to the region's conventional brick buildings.

"Prvok od Burinky (Protozoon) will have three rooms — a bathroom with toilet, living room with a kitchen and a bedroom," explains the project announcement. "The building will be anchored on a pontoon and is a year-round livable house."

"The house offers eco technologies such as recuperation, recirculation shower, remote control, green roof, as well as reservoirs for drinking, utility and sewage water."

Printing the 43 sqm / 463 s...

This 3D-printed, hands-free door opener could be a quick fix to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 and other illnesses

2020-03-28T12:50:00-04:00

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, many architects, designers, and students are turning to 3D-printing to rapidly produce much needed equipment, like protective gear for healthcare workers and respirator valves for sick patients. In their own effort to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, Belgian manufacturing company Materialise recently released free design files for a hands-free door opener that makes you use your wrist (ideally covered by a sleeve) instead of your bare hands to touch door handles, which are a hotspot for germs. Even MayoClinic has printed the door openers to be used in their facilities.

This add-on door opener doesn't require drilling holes or replacing your door's existing handle. According to Materialise, you only have to fasten the two 3D-printed pieces together with screws over your existing door handle. The company also created different designs to fit over different types of door handles. Or, you can adapt their design to make your own.

Last but no...

ICON & company fight homelessness in Mexico with 3D-printed village

2019-12-13T19:08:00-05:00

New Story, a non-profit pioneering solutions to end global homelessness, in partnership with Mexico-based ÉCHALE, have announced "the world's first 3D-printed community" in Mexico. The first set of homes have been revealed. Each coming in at 500 square feet, the innovative structures were printed in a total time of about 24 hours over the course of several days.

ICON printed the homes using their Vulcan II 3D-printer, which is designed to function in rural areas. Families living in makeshift, unsafe shelters and living in extreme poverty will be granted the homes and reside in the village which is due to grow to a total of 50 printed dwellings.

Each will feature two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and bath, and were designed in collaboration with the future residents who will occupy them. With safety in mind, the structures were engineered above the regulated standard of safety to ensure longevity and security in the seismic zone of Tabasco, Mexico.

"World's largest 3D-printed building" springs up in Dubai

2019-12-03T17:36:00-05:00

3D printing equipment manufacturer Apis Cor recently built a two-story administrative office building for a Dubai government agency using one mobile printer. Standing at 31 feet tall with an area of 6,889 square feet, the building's walls were printed while the insulation, roof, foundation and windows were installed using traditional building methods...

According to Smart Cities Dive, "the company's proprietary printing mixture consists of off-the-shelf materials like sand, cement, gypsum, and other proprietary components..." The challenge ultimately becomes creating the right blend of materials in relation to the local climate.

The country's Dubai 3D Printing Strategy aims to ensure that all new buildings there are at least 25% 3D printed by 2025, Smart Cities Dive reports.

This new 'acoustic metamaterial' can cancel the sounds of anything—without blocking airflow

2019-03-11T14:16:00-04:00

A team of Boston University researchers recently stuck a loudspeaker into one end of a PVC pipe. They cranked it up loud. What did they hear? Nothing. How was this possible? Did they block the other end of the pipe with noise canceling foams or a chunk of concrete? No, nothing of the sort. The pipe was actually left open save for a small, 3D-printed ring placed around the rim. That ring cut 94% of the sound blasting from the speaker, enough to make it inaudible to the human ear.

"The mathematically designed, 3D-printed acoustic metamaterial is shaped in such a way that it sends incoming sounds back to where they came from," explain the Boston University researchers behind the discovery: Xin Zhang, a professor at the College of Engineering, and Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. "Inside the outer ring, a helical pattern interferes with sounds, blocking them from transmitting through the open center while preserving air's ability to flow through."

Precisely this capacity of maintaining airflow and enabling light to shine through while muting nearly all of the noise opens up a vast field of practical applications, including architectural.

Zaha Hadid Architects design 3D-printed chairs for Nagami's Milan debut

2018-04-18T16:20:00-04:00

Milan Design Week just kicked off, and one impressive highlight is the debut exhibition Brave New World: Re-thinking Design in the New Age of Technology by brand-new Spanish company, Nagami.

Marking the brand's official launch event, the show at the Nagami pop-up showroom in Milan's Brera Design District features four exquisite chairs—designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, Ross Lovegrove, and Daniel Widrig—that combined computational design and large-scale robotic 3D printing.

Bow & Rise by Zaha Hadid Architects for Nagami

Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects
Design: Patrik Schumacher
Design Team: Sebastian Andia

Design description: "Bow and Rise are the latest results of the extensive, ongoing research that Zaha Hadid Architects is conducting within the domains of 3D printing and material experimentation. These chairs combine pristine design informed b...

MIT is developing 3D-printing technology capable of making a basic building structure

2017-05-11T12:45:00-04:00

The list of materials that can be produced by 3-D printing has grown to include not just plastics but also metal, glass, and even food. Now, MIT researchers are expanding the list further, with the design of a system that can 3-D print the basic structure of an entire building.

According to the researchers, structures built with this tech will be faster to make and cheaper than traditional construction. They'll be customizable and enable forms otherwise difficult to manufacture. "Even the internal structure could be modified in new ways," they write, "different materials could be incorporated as the process goes along, and material density could be varied to provide optimum combinations of strength, insulation, or other properties."

The process involves using a large, industrial robotic arm with a smaller, precision-motion robotic arm attached on a movable track. The highly controllable arm can work as a traditional construction nozzle, pouring concrete or spraying insulation, or be used for digital fabrication with something like a milling head.

The system is different than other large 3-D printers in that it's free-moving and doesn't require an enclosed, fixed structure. To test it out, researchers built a 12 ft. high dome out of foam insulation in less ...