Barcelona’s IAAC has collaborated with Italian 3D printing company WASP on the creation of a 3D printed earthen wall. The element was printed from a mixture of clay and rice fibers, with interlocking timber beams providing support for stair and floor structures.

The 15.7-inch-thick wall was printed in 40 hours using 70 cubic feet of material. Printed in horizontal layers with voids left for the placement of cantilevering timber elements, the team describes their method as one that can “confer both solidity and aesthetic expressivity.”

The prototype was printed using WASP’s modular 3D printing system titled ‘Crane WASP.’ The machinery is composed of a main printer unit that covers an area of 538 square feet by way of a radial mechanical arm, similar to the operation of a traditional construction crane. The Crane WASP system has also been used to deliver the Mario Cucinella-designed TECLA raw earth home which we reported on in 2021.

“This work can be considered a first significant step towards the realization of load-bearing earthen structures,” the team notes. “In light of results obtained [in this project], Crane WASP becomes an increasingly useful tool for transferring design logic into real construction models, easily allowing the experimentation of innovative architectural systems and promoting the progress of 3D printing in the construction industry.”

News of the scheme comes months after an IAAC and WASP team 3D printed a zero-waste housing prototype using local earth. Earlier in 2022, meanwhile, a group of IAAC students built an advanced prototype greenhouse for food and energy production.

Elsewhere in the 3D printing space, MIT researchers have recently developed a method for 3D printing wood, while industry leaders ICON received NASA funding to create 3D printing methods using materials from the Moon and Mars.