3D printing is one of the most versatile emerging technologies. Virtual reality is very entertaining, and home assistant technology has the potential to aid those with disabilities, but 3D printing is simply a medium of creation, not an end product, which leaves its uses as wide open as the human imagination. And it leaves you with a physical object at the end, not merely a digital concept. You can 3D print toys, ribcage implants, pieces of sculpture, and even whole buildings.
3D printing in architecture is done with a very large 3D printer using concrete or clay. The printer head simply moves and squirts out the concrete mixture in a precise pattern, much like squirting ink onto paper, only the 3D printer can print layer after layer to build up the structure of a house.
This technology is so versatile and useful that it’s been used to print luxury resorts and is thought of as the most viable option to build structures on other planets as humans explore the galaxy. It can be very cost-efficient as well, and has been used recently by organizations like Habitat for Humanity to print houses for low-income families. 3D printed architecture is simply a means to an end, but one that uses the building blocks of dirt
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One of the unique things about 3D printed architecture is that it’s pushed Western architects away from thinking in boxes and right angles. Walk down a street in any city in America and you will see a conglomerate of squares and rectangles stacked together to make windows and walls and rooms and buildings and street blocks and cities. We use straight pieces of wood or bricks and stick them together at right angles to form everything that we build.
But with 3D printing, right angles are unnecessary. It’s more like pottery on a building-sized scale. Plates and bowls and pitchers are shaped and molded based on the idea of a curve. Circles, spheres, and cylinders form the base of the shapes that are possible. 3D printed buildings can have right angles, but curves make more structural sense because of the way it’s created.
That’s where a different “Western” style comes into play: West African architecture. For example, buildings in Northern Ghana are traditionally made from local clay, and shaped in connected cylinders that connect rooms and compounds to form a larger home.
This creates a very practical set of round rooms each dedicated to a different part of the family, with a shared courtyard in the middle used for cooking and gatherings. It protects against the cold north wind in the colder season and allows cool shade in the warmer season. With a culture not reliant on indoor plumbing or electricity or air conditioning and central heating, the practice is always top of mind. And many things that are practical are also ecological: keeping rain barrels for collecting water, temperature regulating designs, using building materials from the surrounding land.
This tradition of round homes created from the materials out of the land it’s built on is exactly what the 3D printing world needs. The innovation in architecture often struggles to address practicality. But with a marriage between the traditional infinitely practical buildings of Ghana and the innovative novelty of 3D printing, would create a balance, grounding the new technology in tradition and practicality, and giving the simple traditions an uplift and the ability to break into new ideas and methods.
The future of 3D-printed architecture is wide open. Ghana only has to seize the opportunity and take it to a new level.
