Contour Crafting - Extrude-a-House

lww writes "An article in New Scientist discusses the work of Behrokh Khoshnevis at the University of Southern California to design and build a fully automated robot that performs Contour Crafting, his name for a process to extrude successive layers of semi-fluid building mixtures like concrete to create entire structures. In the article, he says 'The goal is to be able to completely construct a one-story, 2000-square foot home on site, in one day and without using human hands.' by 2005. I'm pretty jazzed at the potential to construct buildings with highly curved/creative contours that would be impossible using current construction techniques."

Comments

Practical only for smaller structures?

[Lafe]

It looks like this sort of technology is actually targeted at just the "smaller" buildings, like houses.

It would seem that this is because it is essentially a "print-a-house" device, which will be limited by the size of the "printer" as well as the type of materials that can be used for "ink." No steel buildings here, only ceramics, some plastics, or adobe-type products.

One thing that struck me funny is that they cited "construction of structures on Moon and Mars" as a possible application, but I simply can't see how it'd be a better option than, say, inflatables.

Curved contours impossible?

[CanSpice]

Negative! There's an alternative building process called cobbing that allows for free-form walls. A group called Cobworks is currently building a cob house in Mexico that's got a number of curved walls.

Curved walls are nowhere near impossible. And placing windows in them is nowhere near impossible either. Furniture and home decoration obviously also has to be bought to fit or placed properly in rooms (i.e. no six foot long paintings hung on a curved wall).

Strange contours have been tried before...

[ChiralSoftware]

The Octagon houses, domes, all kinds of shapes have been tried, but when it comes down to it, plain old right-angle planes are what really work. You can bolt things to them, modify them, cut passages through them, and make additions to them more easily than any other shape. I agree, cubes and rectangles are boring, but alas, they are what seem to work the best for real living.

If you want to see some beautiful uses of curves and non-right-angles in architecture, check out the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA. It is truly beautiful, and the kind of thing which could not possibly have been built even 15 years ago because the computer modeling technology wasn't there. But that is a place you go to spend a few hours once a month, not to live there, and it was built with plenty of open space around it, not packed in like a house.

But I think this house-creating technology is cool and I'm sure it will find uses in more spread-out areas where there is room to be creative.

The logical next step is P2P architecture, right?

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Re:Suburbia

[lpangelrob2]

Interestingly enough, the designer of this building had that in mind. Didn't seem to affect retail values on Michigan Avenue very much. ;-)