X

Architects to build world's first 3D-printed house

Dutch firm Universe Architecture is planning to use a 3D printer to build an endless house shaped like a Möbius strip.

Michelle Starr Science editor
Michelle Starr is CNET's science editor, and she hopes to get you as enthralled with the wonders of the universe as she is. When she's not daydreaming about flying through space, she's daydreaming about bats.
Michelle Starr
2 min read

(Credit: Universe Architecture)

Dutch firm Universe Architecture is planning to use a 3D printer to build an endless house shaped like a Möbius strip.

Universe Architecture — or rather more specifically, architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars — is preparing to build the world's first 3D-printed house.

The structure he's designed doesn't look like the houses most of us live in. Its design is based on the Möbius strip, and it looks like a thing of air and light.

(Credit: Universe Architecture)

It makes a lot of sense, actually. The increased use of CAD has allowed architects in recent years to design buildings that they couldn't have 50 years ago, using software to extrapolate structural stresses — organic, alien, curved confections of glass and steel, like the works of Zaha Hadid, Renzo Piano or Frank Gehry.

Ruijssenaars is taking it a step further. Collaborating with Enrico Dini, the Italian inventor of the large-scale D-Shape 3D printer, he will use its 6x9-metre printing capacity to print the moulds that will make up the structure's frame out of a mixture of sand and binding agent.

These moulds will then be set into place and filled with fibre-reinforced concrete for stability.

It isn't, as you can tell from the pictures, a home for the city. Ruijssenaars told 3ders:

It was a house in Ireland. The location on the coast is so beautiful that we want the design to reflect the nature. Landscapes are endless, and our question was whether we can design a home that has no beginning and no end.

The house, which is being built as an entry in the biannual Europan architecture competition, is expected to be completed sometime in 2014. So if anyone out there has access to a 3D printer similar to the D-Shape, you just might be able to beat Ruijssenaars to the punch — although perhaps with not nearly as much style.

Via www.dezeen.com