Nextbigfuture has covered contour crafting for cement jet printing of buildings for years. We have a contour crafting tag for all of articles on this topic. We have also had a lot of articles about Broad Group of China’s factory mass produced skyscrapers. Broad Group process is being used for several dozen skyscrapers while Contour Crafting remains a mainly lab based curiousity. Contour Crafting is cool, but Broad Group is changing the construction world. Broad Group is controversial with its Sky City project to make the world’s tallest building in 2014. The land has been purchased for Sky City and there are delays for all of the permits. However, Broad Group process has gotten successful enough to have enemies (Other skyscraper developers in China, the politicians who are owned by those developers etc…)
There is TED video for printing a 2500 square foot building using a contour crafting cement printer. Behrokh Khoshnevis demonstrates automated construction, using 3D printers to build an entire house in 20 hours. Nextbigfuture covered the TED talk back in 2012 when it was produced.
We covered it back in 2008 when they got some funding from Caterpillar Inc.
The contour crafting website is here
There was earlier coverage in 2008.
The best use for Contour Crafting is for printing structures on the moon with lunar cement. This would reduce the mass of material that is needed to be taken to the moon.
Broad Group has made several dozen buildings and has many partner franchisees (in China and Asia) who will make more factories for producing factory mass produced skyscrapers.
The foundation for a 100 story skyscraper has been made.
The video of a 30 story building built in 15 days.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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