I get google emails whenever “3D printing” is mentioned at all prominently on the www, and the latest one definitely got my attention. It linked to a story about a guy who has been 3D printing in his garden.
A building contractor living in Minnesota has developed his own 3D printer which can print concrete directly from CAD design software, and he has used it to 3D-print a castle in his back garden.
Here is how that looks:
Calling that a “castle”, as this story does, is a bit of a stretch. At the moment, if this is anything to go by, open-air and architectural 3D printing seems to have all the deft elegance and aesthetic flexibility of a dot matrix printer. But the equivalents of laser printers, and then (what we have now) cheap laser printers, and cheap colour printers, will surely soon be with us. And in due course the building trade will become something completely different, and hence buildings will too.
Yet another reason why I would love to remain alive for another century, just to see how this kind of stuff develops.
In England, this guy would either have failed to get planning permission for this erection, or else he would now be being told to take it down, for having failed to get planning permission.
A comment from Tatyana:
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Oh, Brian, hate to disappoint you, but US is not far behind in terms of stupid zoning laws and regulations, especially in residential neighborhoods.
In New York there is a special trade of people who navigate corridors of Department of Buildings to get approval of construction projects. Nobody else has enough time away from one’s primary occupation to know all the intricacies of local code. These people are officially called “expeditors”.
NY is an extreme case, admittedly, but elsewhere in the country is not much better. Somewhere in Oklahoma or Michigan Street Associations gets people fined if they are not, f.i., mow their lawns often enough and to the height decided on on Association’s meeting. Or if they want to build a “structure” in their backyard it better NOT be connected to their main residence, otherwise their property taxes will be doubled…
Posted by Tatyana on 02 August 2014