A team of UC Berkeley researchers led by Associate Professor of Architecture Ronald Rael pioneered a technique to print cement-based materials, Gizmag reports.
What differentiates this technique from other applications of 3D printing in architecture, such as the multifamily project done in China, is that the technique Rael and his team developed prints out dry, powdered cement instead of wet cement. This allows users to create more complex and precisely finished structures, with reduced weight and waste.
"We are mixing polymers with cement and fibers to produce very strong, lightweight, high-resolution parts on readily available equipment; It’s a very precise, yet frugal technique," Rael told Gizmag. "This project is the genesis of a realistic, marketable process with the potential to transform the way we think about building a structure."
To test the material, the researchers built the Bloom pavilion. The technology they developed has the capacity to construct up to 30 blocks per day, which means a structure like the Bloom pavilion can be completed in 28 days. The researchers’ first attempt took one year, which includes designing the parts, testing, building the printers, and other fine-tuning processes.
According to UC Berkeley, the architecture will be disassembled and shipped to SRI in Thailand, where it will be exhibited and remain on display for several months before traveling to various locations around the world.
Read more on Gizmag.
Related Stories
| Nov 25, 2013
Electronic plan review: Coming soon to a city near you?
With all the effort AEC professionals put into leveraging technology to communicate digitally on projects, it is a shame that there is often one major road block that becomes the paper in their otherwise “paperless” project: the local city planning and permitting department.
| Nov 22, 2013
Kieran Timberlake, PE International develop BIM tool for green building life cycle assessment
Kieran Timberlake and PE International have developed Tally, an analysis tool to help BIM users keep better score of their projects’ complete environmental footprints.
| Nov 8, 2013
Can Big Data help building owners slash op-ex budgets?
Real estate services giant Jones Lang LaSalle set out to answer these questions when it partnered with Pacific Controls to develop IntelliCommand, a 24/7 real-time remote monitoring and control service for its commercial real estate owner clients.
| Oct 30, 2013
Why are companies forcing people back to the office?
For a while now companies have been advised that flexibility is a key component to a successful workplace strategy, with remote working being a big consideration. But some argue that we’ve moved the needle too far toward a “work anywhere” culture.
| Oct 30, 2013
11 hot BIM/VDC topics for 2013
If you like to geek out on building information modeling and virtual design and construction, you should enjoy this overview of the top BIM/VDC topics.
| Oct 18, 2013
Meet the winners of BD+C's $5,000 Vision U40 Competition
Fifteen teams competed last week in the first annual Vision U40 Competition at BD+C's Under 40 Leadership Summit in San Francisco. Here are the five winning teams, including the $3,000 grand prize honorees.
| Oct 18, 2013
A picture’s worth a thousand words… if you can find it
Photographs are becoming more essential to project communication and documentation. Recently, I sat in a local airport integration project meeting in which the owner outlined their expectation for construction documentation. One of the first requirements was to provide photographs throughout the building process.
Sponsored | | Oct 7, 2013
Bridging the digital divide between the BIM haves and have nots
There's no doubt that BIM is the future of design. But for many firms, finding a bridge to access rich model data and share it with those typically left on the sidelines can be the difference between winning a bid or not.
| Oct 2, 2013
Corporate HQ in 10 months made possible with BIM coordination
An integrated Building Team uses BIM/VDC to convert a 1940s-era industrial building into a flashy new headquarters for Hillshire Brands in a matter of months.
| Sep 26, 2013
Mobilizing your job site to achieve a paperless project: fact or fiction?
True mobility in the field has rapidly evolved from lock-box kiosks on each floor to laptops on rolling carts to tablets and iPads loaded with drawings sets stored in the cloud. And WiFi-ready job sites have gone from “nice to have” to “must have” status in just a little over a year.
