Chinese companies have been known to build major real-estate projects very quickly. Now, one company is taking it to a new extreme.

Suzhou-based construction-materials firm Winsun New Materials says it has built 10 200-square-meter homes using a gigantic 3-D printer that it spent 20 million yuan ($3.2 million) and 12 years developing. — blogs.wsj.com

The size of the [3-D printing] market ... is expected to grow to $3.8 billion this year and soar to $16.2 billion globally by 2018. [...]

"This is a market with enormous growth potential now that the main barriers to up-take are being addressed," Shepherd said. "As it matures, there is clear and substantial potential across numerous sectors, such as engineering and architecture, aerospace and defense, and medical ... for 3-D printing to have a dramatic impact within five years." — The Los Angeles Times

A Shanghai building company has erected a small village of pitched-roof, 3-D printed structures—in about a day. WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co is behind the series of humble buildings, which each cost less than $5,000 each. The homes were created through the use of a 490- by 33- by 20-foot 3-D printer that fabricates the basic components required for assembly. — blog.archpaper.com

Zero waste, lower transport costs and recyclable materials – is 3D-printing the future of housebuilding? Dutch architects are putting the process to the test for the first time in Amsterdam — theguardian.com

Most of us have gotten used to smartphones replacing long-established devices such as cameras and music players.

Soon, however, they might be taking over the duties of something that is itself an emerging technology – the 3D scanner.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have created an app that allows an ordinary smartphone to capture and display three-dimensional models of real-world objects, for subsequent finessing or even 3D printing. — Gizmag

After a freewheeling round of discussions, Snøhetta’s New York office settled on a unique challenge: building a Lego structure that captured the plastic bricks’ unique relationship to gravity. “A Lego building has a lightness that a real building doesn’t have to contend with,” says Craig Dykers, Snøhetta’s co-founder. “We thought wouldn’t it be interesting to capture the feeling of gravity in a Lego block, where gravity actually has very little influence in many ways on its structure...” — wired.com

DataAppeal’s newest release allows our 3D data-maps to be imported into other 3D modeling and vector-based software programs including AutoCAD, Sketch Up and 3ds Max. — DataAppeal

If you haven’t quite wrapped your head around the concept of 3-D printing, or haven’t yet had a digital scanner wrap itself around you, now you can do both in “Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital,” at the Museum of Arts and Design. [...]

And while visionary design shows like that of MoMA are entrancing, there’s something to be said for a more down-to-earth, production-focused exhibition. — nytimes.com

A couple of years ago, I took a temp job assisting an architectural model builder. It was an intense experience - meticulously crafting delicate materials into structural works of art. I became fascinated with the craftsmanship and artistic ability that goes into this work. The advent of 3D printing - as exciting as it is - poses a problem for this art form. If a machine can spit out a 3D version of a building, is the era of model-making coming to an end? — vimeo.com

Instead of specially engineering spacecraft components to fit into a rocket, NASA could densely pack materials like fiber and polymer into existing spacecraft and create the components while orbiting the planet. This cuts down on cost and opens up the possibility for larger spacecraft. — gigaom.com

Created by Smith|Allen Studio, an Oakland based architecture firm, the 10ft x 10ft x 8ft form adds a decidedly artificial element to the otherwise organic forest it calls home. However, despite its appearance, the Echoviren is quite environmentally friendly. Printed from a PLA bioplastic, the structure will naturally decompose back into the forest in 30-50 years. According to Smith|Allen “"As [Echoviren] weathers it will become a micro-habitat for insects, moss, and birds." — engineering.com

The days of rummaging frantically for the card that gets us onto public transit may be over.

A team of engineers from MIT has created the 3D-printed "Sesame Ring," which has an embedded RFID tag that lets you tap it to a RFID-based fare reader and hop on. — The Atlantic Cities

The breakthrough not only allows an object made up of many different materials to be printed, but also lets the user change the look and feel of a single material used to print an object. It's possible to print an object with hard and compressible sections out of a single material, even if the raw material isn't flexible in itself. — Gizmag