News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
While we very often hear about how 3D printing is used to construct walls for housing, floors are still a more niche subsegment of construction 3D printing. As partners Autodesk and Additive Tectonics recently demonstrated, however, there is big potential in leveraging additive manufacturing for the production of flooring, as the technology can unlock greater efficiency and sustainability.
Buena Vista, Colorado is a mountain town known for its incredible views (obviously) as well as its ideal location for hiking. The scenic community is, however, also increasingly at risk of wildfires. In fact, nearly half of Colorado’s population reportedly lives in regions that could be impacted by wildfires, a growing risk due to global warming. Ideally, this risk would be addressed through grand-scale policy changes, but in the absence of that, smaller scale initiatives are critical. One such initiative is being led by construction tech company VeroTouch, which worked with Buena Vista contracting firm South Main to 3D print a pair of fire-resistant homes.
HiveASMBLD, a Houston-based automated 3D printed construction company, has partnered with Cole Klein Builders and The City of Houston to create Zuri Gardens, one of the world’s first large-scale affordable housing developments produced using 3D printing technology.
ICON, a 3D printing construction technology company, has released for sale three one-bedroom homes in Austin’s mixed-use, mixed-income Mueller community as part of the Mueller Affordable Homes Program for income-qualified individuals. These resilient, energy-efficient 650 square foot homes will be built alongside nearly a dozen two and three-bedroom 3D printed homes, all designed by Michael Hsu Office of Architecture.
Shanghai’s XISUI Design has created a 3D printed concrete playground in China’s Shandong Province. The 13,000-square-meter Boulder Park blends natural boulders with looming, contoured 3D printed structures that function as a rock cave adventure area.
Italian company WASP has become known for its 3D printing hardware, particularly its clay and cement printing platforms that have unlocked numerous creative projects, like a sensory garden and coral reef modules. Some may not know, however, that the company has since its early days been driven by a utopian dream of building Shamballa, a place where 3D printing could be used to build community and provide the fundamentals to human life: housing, food, healthcare, energy, employment and culture.
Urban wildlife is quite amazing at adapting to city environments, both through behavioral changes and physiological ones. A study on Chicago rodents, for example, found that meadow voles had evolved to have smaller inner ear bones, possibly to mitigate the effects of noise pollution in urban areas. Despite this, humans must also recognize the challenges that our urban spaces create for animals and help by making accommodations and safe environments. On this front, a team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has created a 3D printed wall façade that functions as a nesting shelter for local wildlife.
According to the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), a groundbreaking concrete innovation could change the way we build—and how we fight climate change. Researchers there have combined 3D printing with fossilized microscopic algae to create a new type of concrete that captures significantly more carbon dioxide while using less cement.
Sperra, a producer of structural systems for aquatic environments, has entered a partnership with Philippe and Ashlan Cousteau’s Bluetech venture, Voyacy Regen, to support a pioneering coral reef resiliency project in Aqaba, Jordan. This initiative, led by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Aqaba Development Corporation, integrates Sperra’s cutting-edge 3D concrete printing to restore marine ecosystems in the Red Sea.
A groundbreaking 3D printing system developed by Chinese scientists at Tiandu Laboratory has explored using only on-site-sourced lunar soil to build habitats, paving the way for the large-scale, on-site construction of lunar research stations. The Deep Space Exploration Laboratory in Hefei, Anhui Province, has successfully prototyped a lunar regolith 3D printer that eliminates the need for Earth-sourced construction materials, according to Yang Honglun, a senior engineer at the lab.