These 3D-printed dirt walls grow a garden when you water them
source link: https://www.fastcompany.com/90775558/these-3-d-printed-dirt-walls-grow-a-garden-when-you-water-them
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These 3D-printed dirt walls grow a garden when you water them
A team of designers in Jerusalem wants to swap concrete and reinforcement steel for living walls entirely made of natural materials.
3D printing has come a long way in the past 20 years. Already, we can print bowls made of sawdust, electric motorcycles made of recycled plastic bottles, and houses made of concrete. But the next oddball material to make it into a 3D-printing machine is now soil.
[Photo: courtesy of the designers]The problem is that existing technology didn’t allow building with such organic materials, and as Nathansohn says, “architects and designers are mostly limited to the machines that are out there.” You can shape bricks out of agave pulp, or cast walls made of compacted natural materials like earth or chalk, but these methods can be pretty limiting when it comes to complex geometric shapes like curved walls. They’re also labor intensive and often call for special construction skills.
Plucking radishes from the walls of your house has a certain appeal, but the grander vision here is for soil to replace concrete, and roots to replace reinforcement steel (though exactly how strong those roots could be remains unclear). “There is a lot of mathematical work on the fractals of plants and trees, so integrating the way different plants grow into the design process and the geometry of these walls can make the material stronger and more efficient,” she says.
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