Excellent idea to change and optimize how we innovate to build in a time when resources and earth's limits are becoming clear. Imagine and dream big.
As you've highlighted:
- 3D printing - building structures and shelter can be far more sustainable with this new tool. 3D printing can make more efficient use of the concrete resources and faster building timelines. The embodied carbon could be lower for the energy required compared to what's needed for all phases of conventional construction. Local, and cleaner, energy needs to be accessible.
- Digital design and form control - a step forward for all construction design. The form of built components and strength assessment for non-linear elements becomes less constrained. Innovation and adoption here can even help standard concrete construction. Computational and circular approaches to design can reduce material input to components, such as Forma Systems. And digitally controlled robots may one day save construction cost and concrete weight with automated rebar placement, as startup Apidae Forms proposes
And beyond concrete:
- Alternative materials - Construction practices can replace concrete with alternatives such as mass timber, plastic, metals, etc) or with innovative processes that make materials including wastes good inputs for 3D, factory made, or stick-built structures and infrastructure. Check out startup Woodspray working with waste sawdust, reinforcement and binder or social enterprises in Kenya and other locations using waste plastic to create alternate building materials.
https://www.forma-systems.com/ founded by Prof Caitlin Muller at MIT
https://apidaeforms.com/.
Woodspray.com/build
https://www.gjenge.co.ke/ and https://ecopost.co.ke/, Social Enterprises changing plastic
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Sarah Simon P.E., M.ASCE
RETIRED
Ipswich MA
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