the Mars Dune Alpha being 3d printed in a hangar
BIG and ICON’s latest collaboration is 3D printing NASA’s next long-term Mars habitat

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and Texan robotics and advanced materials company ICON have revealed their latest collaboration, the 3D-printed Mars Dune Alpha. The experimental habitat will be used by NASA to simulate long-term missions to Mars and document the effects on participants. As part of the space agency’s Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA)

a man walking up stairs onto a concrete footbridge bridge, striatus
Zaha Hadid Architects and Block Research Group unveil a swooping 3D-printed concrete bridge in Venice

A freestanding, unreinforced pedestrian bridge built from 53 3D-printed concrete blocks is now open for leisurely foot traffic in Venice. Although Striatus doesn’t carry pedestrians over one of the city’s famed canals, this first-of-its-kind structure is now open for park-bound traversing at the leafy Giardino della Marinaressa during the run of the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. The roughly 40-by-52-foot arched footbridge was

sign for williamsburg
Habitat for Humanity and Alquist partner for the East Coast’s first 3D-printed Habitat home

Just weeks after it announced a partnership with the Virginia Center for Housing Research at Virginia Tech to design, build, and study America’s first 3D-printed, private-public partnership grant-funded single-family home in Richmond, Alquist has revealed another unprecedented project underway in Williamsburg, Virginia. This time, it’s the East Coast’s first 3D-printed Habitat for Humanity dwelling. The project, spearheaded by additive construction company Alquist with Habitat for

a man operates a 3D printer at a construction site labeled Habitat for Humanity on the pump
Habitat for Humanity kicks off work on its first 3D-printed U.S. home in Tempe, Arizona

In Arizona, the state with the fourth most dire affordable housing shortage according to National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC)’s recently released Gap report, the Central Arizona chapter of global nonprofit Habitat for Humanity is looking to pave the way for new modes of sustainable, scalable low-cost housing across the Grand Canyon State. How? With the aid of ample local largesse and a

rendering of a single-level home
Alquist and Virginia Tech team up for America’s first 3D-printed, public-private partnership-funded home

Additive construction company Alquist and the Virginia Center for Housing Research (VCHR) at Virginia Tech have partnered to design, build, and study a 3D-printed single-family home that’s the first of its kind in the United States: funded by a private-public partnership grant. Work on the three-bedroom, 1,550-square-foot home broke ground earlier this week at 217 Carnation Street in Richmond’s Midlothian neighborhood.

rendering of a ranch-style 3d-printed home
ICON teams with Lake|Flato Architects for a 3D-printed, ADU-equipped Austin home

ICON, the Texas-based robotics and advanced materials construction company with lunar ambitions, has announced a new series of (earthbound) 3D-printed homes designed in collaboration with a slew of top architects. San Antonio- and Austin-based Lake|Flato Architects is the first to be tapped for the so-called Exploration Series, which according to ICON, will “develop new design languages and architectural vernaculars” with collaborating architects

Mario Cucinella Architects and WASP complete TECLA, a 3D-printed earthen abode

Bologna- and Milan-based Mario Cucinella Architects (MC A) and leading Italian 3D printing company WASP have revealed a newly-completed TECLA, a high-performance prototype dome house that marries primordial materials and advanced construction technology. Built from locally sourced clay using Crane WASP, a newly developed modular 3D-printing system, the deeply sustainable two-room dwelling is the first 3D-printed structure to be realized using indigenous

rendering of two modern homes with large lawns
ICON goes “mainstream” with production of 3D-printed single-family homes for new Austin development

Just a year after Austin, Texas–based construction technology startup ICON first unveiled a half-dozen 3D-printed homes at a 51-acre community established to provide affordable, permanent housing for formerly homeless residents of the city, the fast-growing (and Bjarke Ingels Group–backed) company has announced, in partnership with Kansas City, Missouri–based real estate developer 3Strands, the arrival of a new development in East Austin populated by two-to-four-bedroom homes that

a modest suburban home
3D-printed home on Long Island’s North Shore hits the market for $300,000

Just an hour east of the first mass-produced suburb in the United States, a new model of affordable, quick-to-build housing has been realized—and is now for sale—in the town of Riverhead on Long Island’s North Shore. Boasting three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a spacious open floor plan, the suburban New York home in question

Rendering of a lunar colony with circular buildings for project olympus
NASA, BIG, SEArch+, and ICON team up to develop a lunar city

NASA is continuing the work started in its 2018 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, which sought designs for 3D printing radiation-shielded Martian shelters from the surrounding regolith, a little closer to home. Participants SEArch+, 3D printing, robotics, and advanced materials startup ICON, and the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) have all been tapped to research how we might

A prototypical mighty buildings home, a single-story adu
Mighty Buildings is 3D printing prefabricated accessory dwelling units

Mighty Buildings, a new San Francisco-based construction startup, is aiming to 3D print prefabricated housing. They’ve hit the ground running, and the company has already produced a number of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and partnered with EYRC Architects to design its new range of stylish, small homes. By producing lightweight, stone wall, flooring, and roof

Racks of servers with the Internet Archive logo on them
Op-Ed: Coronavirus might give us the internet we’ve always wanted

There was a time when the internet, then new, and untested, was widely welcomed as a revolutionary technology that promised to alleviate—even fix—many of the evils then affecting late modern societies. That brief, juvenile spell was followed by almost 20 years of remorse and misgivings: from the early 2000s to this past month the internet,

3D printing a visor component for a DIY face shield
Operation PPE creates 3D-printed equipment for the COVID-19 front lines

Things right now are undoubtedly, brutally rough. And when the going gets rough, the architecture and design community gets 3D printing. As part of a sweeping grassroots mobilization effort that expands and evolves daily, architects, designers, makers, and a small army of displaced students have banded together and fired up their 3D printers to produce

Image of a dog within the Fetch House
This 3D-printed doghouse can hold up to 1,000 tennis balls

The doghouse, that ubiquitous shelter found in backyards across the globe, has seen little in the way of innovation—that is until now. The Fetch House, developed by CallisonRTKL’s Dallas team, is a 3D-printed abode for our canine companions that simultaneously functions as a storage device for at least 1,000 tennis balls. The prototype was awarded

A biomorphic object with a swirling, nacre-like texture.
Neri Oxman grows tools for the future at new MoMA retrospective

A pioneer in materials, objects, and construction, Neri Oxman is showing work from her 20-year career as an architect, designer, and inventor at the Neri Oxman: Material Ecology exhibition currently on view until May 20 at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Curated by Paola Antonelli with help from curatorial assistant Anna Burckhardt, Oxman’s work on display explores the intersection of the

A tall building with a sweepiing facade made of interlocking white Ts, designed by Morphosis. The building continues at a lower height as a undulating gray roof with some irregular fenestration.
Morphosis’s Kerenza Harris talks tech and integration

Kerenza Harris is the director of design technology at Morphosis, where she works across the firm to integrate advanced computational techniques and high-tech simulations throughout the design process. Ahead of her presentation on system-based design processes and extended reality at TECH+ in Los Angeles next week, AN caught up with Harris to get her takes

A curving concrete facade with thin, tall windows that was 3D-printed by Apis Cor
Apis Cor claims to have created the largest on-site 3D-printed building

Dubai is now home to what is claimed to be the world’s largest on-site 3D-printed building. The 31-foot-tall, two-story government agency was printed in on-site three weeks using a single printer developed by the Boston-based Apis Cor, which has previously garnered attention for their sub-$10,000 printed home and for winning NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge along

A top-down view of a white plastic tile with a 3D map of a city.
Boston architects come together to make a 3D-printable map of the city

The Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA) has long kept 3D models of its city. However, cobbled together over the years, the files are at times cumbersome and as firms increasingly turn to 3D printing for model making and testing, not so useful. Printers don’t know how to process them or they are not designed

Four 3D-printed blocks, two gray stacked, the top with a dent, at right a gray block with a dent over a broken yellow block. These demonstrate the structures of Tubulanes
3D printing nano-tech inspired forms could lead to stronger, lighter buildings

Researchers at Rice University have developed a technique that makes 3D-printed common materials diamond-hard. Inspired by the theoretical form of tubulanes—a carbon nanotube structure that scientists predicted in the 1990s would have tremendous strength but have been unable to produce—the researchers scaled the structures up and found that these larger-scale imitators still maintained many of

A person stands under an elliptical skeleton of hexagons that are glowing purple, designed by Jenny Sabin
Jenny Sabin’s installation for Microsoft responds to occupants’ emotions

At Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, campus, architect Jenny Sabin has helped realize a large-scale installation powered by artificial intelligence. Suspended from three points within an atrium, the two-story, 1,800-pound sculpture is a compressive mesh of 895 3D-printed nodes connected by fiberglass rods and arranged in hexagons along with fabric knit from photoluminescent yarn. Created as part

A large curbed wooden structure made of interwoven planks.
A steampunk pavilion combines analog and digital technology

In Tallinn, Estonia, a knotted wooden structure that combines both new and old technology has won the Huts and Habitats award at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale. Curated by Yael Reisner under the theme “Beauty Matters,” the biennale seeks to celebrate the beauty in opposition to architectural environs that can often be isolating, alienating, and ecologically

A render of a pedestrian bridge stretching over a canal.
A collaboration of Dutch companies wants to 3D print an entire pedestrian bridge

Three Dutch organizations—the materials company DSM, the engineering firm Royal HaskoningDHV, and the 3D printer manufacture CEAD—have teamed up to create a printer capable of printing continuous glass- or carbon-fiber-reinforced thermoplastics. Currently, they are demonstrating the capabilities of printing structural elements, and even, they hope, entire pedestrian bridges, with CEAD’s CFAM Prime printer which can create

A robot in the form of a metal box is attached to various red cables and suspended a few feet in the air, unveiled for the Bauhaus centennary
To celebrate the Bauhaus centennial, German researchers show off new robot printer

This summer, to celebrate the centenary of the Bauhaus, the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in Weimar, Germany, hosted an exhibition called sumaery2019. At the exhibition, the university showcased some of the latest innovations in robotics, displaying a cable-driven robot that 3D printed cementitious material, designed by a team led by professor Jan Willmann, in cooperation with the

Nine concrete columns are lit below in front of a mountain in a nighttime scene thanks to the team from ETH Zurich
Researchers and students at ETH Zurich print complex columns for dance festival

For the Origen Festival in Riom, Switzerland students in the Masters of Advanced Studies in Architecture and Digital Fabrication program at ETH Zurich, guided by researcher Ana Anton, 3D printed nine unique, computationally-designed columns with a new layered extrusion printing process developed at the university over the past year and a half. ETH students and

A blue drone made for 3D printing with pink and blue glowing blades floats in front of a glass building.
GXN thinks the future of construction could be flying 3D printers

Most 3D printers, no matter their size, operate in a pretty similar way: they move along a grid to deposit material, sliding on axes in a fixed manner within a frame. Even those with more flexible arms remain fixed at a point. GXN, the research-focused spinoff of the Danish architecture firm 3XN, is looking to

A model in a structured, widening dress comprising slits of fabric walks through a ring of rotating silk leaves designed by Iris van Herpen
Iris van Herpen collaborates with architects for hypnotizing couture presentation

Since Dutch designer Iris van Herpen opened her eponymous atelier in 2007, the brand has become the face of high-tech fashion. Often the first to embrace new technologies like laser cutting and 3D printing in her fluid and futuristic forms, van Herpen has designed pieces worn by the likes of Solange and Rihanna, and, on the

An upward shot of an interlocking, biomorphic fiber structure presented at Exhibit Columbus
Exhibit Columbus’s inaugural fellow program to feature high-tech pavilions

Exhibit Columbus, the annual celebration of mid-century and contemporary design in Columbus, Indiana, will be showing off new possibilities of materials that unify support and envelope. This August,  two of the festival’s six University Design Research Fellows will present this work as part of a brand new fellowship program.  Marshall Prado, a professor at the

A gif of a woman jumping rope, while two robots twirl the rope
Could jump roping robots change how we think about architectural drawing?

“Movement was always an underlying instigator to how I look at form,” explains architect Amina Blacksher, who began ballet at age six. Her work crosses boundaries and unifies seemingly disparate practices, as she now, among many other things, uses the tools and methods of an architect to investigate the place of robots in our lives