Thinking big is apparently no challenge for architects Michael Hansmeyer and Benjamin Dillenburger. They’ve created a 3D printed room using algorithms to design its intricate cathedral-like interior. Assembled from 64 massive, separate, sandstone parts printed out with a huge 3D printer, the room contains 260 million surfaces printed at a resolution of a tenth of a millimeter. The 11-ton room took a month to print but only a day to assemble. The fabrication methods the duo used to print the room will, they believe, open the door to printing architecture, freeing architects to create new unimaginable buildings and also restore old ones.
Hansmeyer and Dillenburger, both computational architects at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’s architecture department in Zurich, wrote algorithms to completely design the complex geometry of the 16 square meter (170 sq ft) room. Dubbed “Digital Grotesque,” their modern take on a medieval grotto was made with a new type of 3D printed sandstone, infused with a hardening resin to increase its structural stability. To print out the sandstone parts that made the room, the duo used a massive Voxeljet 3D printer, about the size of a large room. “It can print a single piece that weighs 12 tons, yet at a layer resolution of 0.13 millimeters,” says Hansmeyer. “This combination of scale and resolution seemed unreal to us at first.”
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