The World’s First 3D Printed Building

Dubai is well known for creating unorthodox, elegant, extravagant and often times strange looking buildings; some buildings have actually been refused planning permission on the basis that it wasn’t interesting enough. Some of the worlds best architects work in Dubai trying to keep up this uniquely creative industry however, the city is hoping to further their ambitious projects creating the worlds first 3D printed and fulling functional office building.

The planned building is a one story office building, about 2,000 square foot in size, situated in the centre of the coastal business hub and will be printed using a 20ft high printer. There is a lot more to this project than just printing a shell though, the interior of the building is also to be 3D printed. This should serve to cut labour and time costs; the labour costs could be reduced by up to 80% according to estimate experts. The project is hoping to take these new technologies to simplify peoples lives and put them to practical use.

The Chairman of the National Innovation Committee Mohamed Al Gergawi said in a statement:

“We are keen to use the latest technologies to simplify people’s lives and to serve them better. This project is part of our overall innovation strategy to create new designs and new solutions in education, healthcare and cities,”

The project involves a number of parties such as the city of Dubai, Gensler, Thornton Thomasetti Syska Hennesy and a Chinese company WinSun. WinSun specialises in building houses through 3D printing. The materials in a project like this is most likely to be a large chunk of the costs however poor areas in Africa have 3D printed houses with mud, which is possibly the most economically friendly way to build a house. This wouldn’t suit Dubai though so this project is set to use a plastic to print the house layer by layer. Printing with concrete is another option at present but we will have to wait and see how this project unfolds.

Conor John

As a graduate of Computer Science I have a very keep interest in technology and try to stay informed on as much as I can. I have also always been interested in science, mainly biology, nature and health. I hope you enjoy my articles.