Tag Archives: DUS Architects

This 3D printed cabin was designed to give you an escape from the everyday urban lifestyle!

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If you are looking for an unconventional staycation, this 3D-printed Urban Cabin could be it! It has transformed a former industrial area in Amsterdam from a vast empty space into an urban retreat with a pocket park for picnics and an outdoor bathtub that will teach you to not focus on what others might be thinking. The compact sustainable dwelling is actually born from research about building in urban environments. It is entirely 3D printed with bio-plastic and can be fully recycled to be reprinted in the following years!

The compact sustainable dwelling is actually born from research about building in urban environments by Amsterdam-based firm Dus Architects. DUS designs indoor and outdoor furniture, interiors, and architectural installations made by means of 3D printing, to accelerate a new way of building: smart, 100% circular, and on-demand.

The design plays with the relations between indoor and outdoor spaces creating luxury within a minimum footprint. Entirely 3D printed with black-colored bio-based material, it showcases different types of façade ornament, form-optimization techniques, and smart solutions for insulation and material consumption. The floor and stepped porch are combined with a concrete finish creating a beautiful pattern that extends into a path in the pocket park. In the green around the cabin, you can enjoy the sculptural printed bathtub, and watch the sunset surrounded by waving poplar trees.

The 8 m2 x 25 m3 house fits the ‘tiny house’ trend in which small dwelling designs solve large housing issues. The design comprises a mini-porch and indoor space in which a sofa can be doubled up as a twin bed. 3D printing techniques can be used particularly well for small temporary dwellings or in disaster areas. After use, the bio print material can be shredded entirely and re-printed into new designs.

The Urban Cabin is part of the 3D Print Living Lab by DUS architects. It is another step in using the in-house developed 3D print technology to build sustainable, customizable, and on-demand housing solutions for the fast-growing cities around the globe.

The 3D Printed Urban Cabin rethinks intimacy and individual space within the city. A precise insertion changed the former industrial area from a vast empty non-place into a retreat to escape the speed of everyday life and to enjoy summer, the waterfront, and the sunset with friends or by yourself.

The Summer House is the first step in using our 3D print technology in developing sustainable, customizable and on-demand housing solutions for the fast-growing cities around the globe.

The design plays with the relations between indoor and outdoor spaces creating luxury within a minimum footprint. Entirely 3D printed with black colored bio-based material it showcases different types of façade ornament, form-optimization techniques, and smart solutions for insulation and material consumption.

The floor and stepped porch are combined with a concrete finish creating a beautiful pattern that extends into the pocket park. In the green created around the house, you can enjoy the sculptural outdoor printed bathtub. Urban Cabin truly offers a unique perspective into urban architecture, sustainable construction and one-of-a-kind experience in your own city!

Designer: DUS architects

DIY Minibuilder Robots Will 3D Print Large-Scale Constructions

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Minibuilder Robots 3D Printing a Construction

There’s a bright future for 3D printing, and it looks like nothing will escape this technology. From various organs to complex constructions, everything will be manufactured this way.

Enrio Dini of dshape, DUS Architects, UCLA, USC/Contour Crafting, in collaboration with Emerging Objects, has developed construction 3D printing robots that take a different approach to creating buildings from scratch. If until now, such robots 3D printed constructions by adding layers in the same way a cake would be made, the Minibuilder developed by Dini and Sasa Joki? employs two tubes to deploy a toothpaste-resembling synthetic marble.

The creators of these robots explained how compressed air is used for forcing out the marble through the tubes. Sasa Joki?, one of the head researchers mentioned that “It’s about any construction robots capable of working in teams to create structures much bigger than themselves. We chose to make these three robots because they are all essential to fabricate the most important building elements like walls and ceilings, but the family of Minibuilders can be endlessly extended adding robots with diverse functionalities, from painting to insulation and beyond.”

Petr Novikov, another contributor to the project, expressed his enthusiasm regarding the role the Minibuilder robots will play in the construction of future buildings: “We’re sure that Minibuilders will play a big and important role in the future of robotic construction. We also encourage other researchers to explore this field. For that reason we shared papers with technical details of our robots.”

One of the best things about the Minibuilder robot is that it theoretically can be made at home. Most of the parts used for building it are open source and can be purchased at any proper hobby store.

With that in mind, it looks like in the not so distant future 3D printed buildings might become the norm. Of course, it depends on how fast such robots can do their work. If it takes longer to 3D print a building rather than raising it using classic methods, the whole technology might not have the best adoption rate ever. Portable, modular approaches such as this one could be replaced by large-scale robots, especially if we’re talking about building extremely complex structures. The resistance of the used materials is yet another factor that needs to be assessed prior to making these robots commercially available.

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