CHICAGO: The advent of 3D printing of buildings will transform cities, a leading futurist says, and will have massive ramifications for government planning processes.
Chinese firms have already started to trial the 3D building of apartment blocks.
And Vivek Wadhwa, a Silicon Valley technology expert, says these manufacturing processes will be available worldwide within five to 10 years.
“What the Chinese are doing is great with the technology, but I wouldn’t want to live in those houses yet,” said Mr Wadhwa.
“We are about five or 10 years away from it being practical on a commercial scale.”
Mr Wadhwa said the use of 3D printers – which, in theory, should be able to produce structures much more cheaply and quickly than those built with conventional methods – would change the design styles available to architects.
“Right now when we design buildings they’re all square,” Mr Wadhwa said. “You have flat structures, because that’s the way carpenters and brick layers build buildings.”
But the technology, were it to become as widespread as Mr Wadhwa predicted, would also lead to wholesale changes to the manner in which buildings were planned and approved.
“We are going to have upheaval like you can’t imagine,” he said…
