“3D printing [on a wide scale] is a lot closer than I
thought,” notes Eric Holt, assistant professor at the Franklin L. Burns
School of Real Estate and Construction Management at the University of
Denver. “I used to believe it was at least five years out, but the ball
has moved really quickly.”
Icon ‘s printer. Icon has recently received funding from NASA to adapt its technology to explore the moon. Courtesy Regan Morton Photography
Mighty Buildings cofounder Sam Ruben says that the company
can produce its units in two or three weeks, at a cost that’s about 40
percent lower than similar-quality construction and with almost zero
construction waste. Walls are printed via a gantry supported,
free-moving 3D printer applying layers of a thermoset composite, which
hardens into a stonelike material—similar in strength to concrete—that
is lightweight, self-supporting, and insulating. (Most companies install
rebar in 3D-printed concrete after it is laid, a more time-consuming
and costly process.) After printing is complete, a 3D scanner ensures
that the structure matches the original digital file. Then robotic arms
from German manufacturer KUKA give the homes texture, detailing, and
functionality using varying heads that perform tasks like milling and
spraying.
“We have a severe shortage of housing in this country,”
says Ruben. “We need a better way to build it.” Some of his firm’s
biggest remaining challenges include expediting permitting and moving
into mass production.
China is also demanding faster, more efficient, and less
wasteful construction. Its leader, and arguably the industry’s
trailblazer, is WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co., a company with
offices throughout the People’s Republic and abroad. Founded in 2003,
it began 3D-printing building components, and now prints entire
buildings (its printer is 20 feet high, 40 feet wide, and 120 feet
long). WinSun claims many of the firsts in the business, including the
world’s first batch of 3D-printed buildings (ten structures in
Shanghai’s Qingpu District); a five-story residence in Suzhou, which is
the world’s tallest 3D-printed building; and the world’s first
3D-printed villa in a not-so-subtle French Second Empire style. Upcoming
WinSun projects are even more ambitious, and in 2017 it signed a
memorandum of understanding with AECOM, which will expand its efforts
globally.
Dubai, another construction superpower, currently has the
world’s most ambitious policy to promote automated construction: an
official 3D Printing Strategy. Launched by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al
Maktoum in 2016, it calls for 25 percent of buildings to be 3D-printed
by 2030. A major symbolic step forward for this plan was the 3D printing
of the Dubai Office of the Future. Completed in 2016, it was the
world’s first fully occupied office complex to be built with 3D-printing
technology. The 2,700-square-foot office (built in a collaboration
between WinSun, Gensler, Thornton Tomasetti, Syska Hennessy Group, and
Dubai-based Killa Architectural Design )
was also created layer by layer via a gantry printer. It took roughly
17 days to print and cost about $140,000 to create, not including
finishing.
The project also clarified the learning curve associated
with the new technology, points out Benjamin Piper, design principal and
partner at Killa, which managed unforeseen issues with material
tolerances, thermal barriers, site logistics, and discrepancies between
digital models and physical reality. (Owing to bureaucratic and
intellectual property issues, the printed building segments were shipped
from China rather than being printed on the ground in Dubai.) Killa
recently finished up Dubai’s Museum of the Future, just down the street,
a torus-shaped building with a 3D-printed concrete frame and 3D-cut
cladding taking the shape of Arabic calligraphy.
The freedom of form enabled by 3D printing is also being exploited in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, where Project Milestone —a partnership between the city, Eindhoven University of Technology, Houben/Van Mierlo Architects ,
Van Wijnen Group, investor Vesteda, and others—is creating a community
of five curving homes in Bosrijk, a wooded neighborhood near the city’s
airport. The project’s first home will be completed this year: a
single-story, roughly 1,000-square-foot building that will be followed
by four multistory residences.
Their curving, contour-crafted shapes, notes Theo Salet,
dean of the Department of the Built Environment at Eindhoven University
of Technology, allow for concrete to be applied only where needed,
meaning far less waste. (The team applied rebar in the wet concrete via
an automated filament system and injected insulation, which helped
support the thin concrete planes.) They also fit into their rural
setting, like natural shapes. “It will look as if five stones had landed
in a field,” says Rudy van Gurp, a project spokesperson.
Salet embarked on the project to seek improvements in the
slow-moving construction industry, namely more affordable housing, more
sustainable use of materials, and a safer building environment for
workers. Working on each home, he says, will provide insights for the
next. “It’s a continuous learning process,” notes Cristina Nan, a
specialist in emerging architectural technologies who is working on the
subsequent homes. “Which pieces to print, which geometries, and what
order of construction.”
While such an approach is more sustainable than
traditional construction, the use of concrete is still quite carbon
intensive. One possible solution is TECLA, an automated home-building
system developed by New York– and Bologna, Italy–based Mario Cucinella Architects
(MCA) and 3D-printer manufacturer WASP. The technology employs robotic
arms and a mixture of local earth, water, and rice husks to create
bulbous homes that can be tailored (in shape, material, density,
orientation, etc.) to their local climate and vernacular. MCA architect
Irene Giglio, who describes TECLA units as “growing out of each place,”
says their first unit will be inaugurated in March, and the team hopes
to expand the system quickly after that.
These examples are just the tip of a 3D-printed iceberg,
as the number of companies incorporating additive manufacturing grows.
Others are taking more targeted approaches to construction automation.
For automated bricklaying there is Construction Robotics’ SAM
(Semi-Automated Mason) and Fastbrick Robotics’ Hadrian X, which can lay
bricks and other masonry pieces more than three times as fast as humans.
For formwork there is Odico’s robotic hot wire cutter, which can create
curved, intricate molds. For rebar tying there is Advanced Construction
Robotics’ TyBot. Rovers like Effidence’s EffiBOT can carry construction
materials on-site, while Doxel’s lidar-equipped rover can carry out
site inspections. Built Robotics’ Autonomous Dozer replaces manned
bulldozers, while Volvo’s TA15 can haul 15 tons of material without a
driver.
And while they’re still notoriously risk-averse, builders
worldwide—seeing potential improvements in cost, productivity, and
safety—are incorporating automation into their processes one piece at a
time, says Dennis Steigerwalt, president of the Housing Innovation Alliance ,
an industry think tank. Larger builders are employing components,
panels, and sometimes entire modules created using robots, while smaller
companies move closer to an almost fully automated factory environment.
Steigerwalt says it’s just a matter of time until we reach
the tipping point. “If you can achieve scale, you can bring the cost
down. Over time you can see it being less expensive, less wasteful, less
risky, and higher quality. Not everyone needs to build this way, but
once you get the wheel running, there will be a solid position for this
within the U.S. economy.”