By Zak Stone
It's not enough that architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars's Landscape House will be an inhabitable Möbius strip--in which floor turns into ceiling which turns into floor again, in an infinite loop. He'll build it using a 3-D printer, which would make the home the world's first 3-D printed building.
"In traditional construction you have to make a mold of wood and you fill it with concrete and then you take out the wood--it's a waste of time and energy," Ruijssenaars told the BBC. With 3-D priniting, "You can print what you want--it's a more direct way of constructing."
The house is expected to take about 18 months, and somewhere in the range of $5 to $6 million, to finish. Since rebuilding a duplicate model is almost as simple as pressing "print" again, Ruijssenaars says he'd eventually like to reprint a copy of the building for every country. The D-Shape, used to print the building's sections will turn out hollow shells, made from a combination of sand and bonding agent, that, when mixed together, resemble marble. Part of the installation will include reinforcing the shells with concrete and fiberglass.
Enrico Dini, the D-Shape's inventor, told the Guardian that his device allows an unprecedented level of precision when it comes to realizing architectural renderings: "The human limitations of master builders and bricklayers will no longer hamper architects' visions."
Dini and Ruijssenaars talk a big game. It'll be interesting to see how the project turns out next year.






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