future of construction
Our future-oriented friends over at Next Big Future wrote an excellent overview of revolutions taking place in the world of building design and construction. Already stereolithography and other rapid prototyping technologies are becoming available at ever larger scales. (Check out Materialise’s work on Pininfarina’s Sintesi concept car). Imagine being able to print your house …
Several seeds for a revolution in the building industry are mentioned, among which contour crafting. Ink-jet technologies become cement-jet, layer by layer additive construction. Such technologies are about 200 times faster than traditional construction/manufacturing methods at 5 times lower the cost.
They also refer to an article which appeared in The Economist a few days ago on the coming off age of Building Information Modelling systems (BIM) (e.g. Autodesk’s Revit), moving the architectural profession from the 2D blueprint to the fully integrated 3D model coupled to a 3D database. As complexity increases such intelligent systems help to manage large projects by serving as a joint model for architects, engineers, technicians, etc. smoothing communication between these parties. Better, more economical, more ecological buildings.
“The ability to nudge and tweak a design, experiment with different approaches and immediately see the cost, structural and energy-consumption implications of those changes could lead to more imaginative architecture.”
PS. There might be a BIMStorm coming near you.
Check out other seeds of the revolution over at NextBigFuture.
Image by The Economist
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