Not Your Typical Meeting Space
If you are somewhere in Amsterdam and looking for a meeting place, we know just where you can find one. And it’s totally 3D printed. The building will be called De Vergaderfabriek, Dutch for “the Meeting Factory.” The structure is 1,000-square-foot but was originally supposed to be bigger and taller. It isn’t ready yet for occupancy, but it will be soon.
The Meeting Factory is located near a small airport and was designed to look like the rotating blades of a jet engine. The walls are curved to create a sense of equality and safety that will enhance communication. Those who will use the room or the “tent’ as they like to call it, will be able to choose from different 360-degree video projections set to their specified music. It’s not going to be a room with bare walls. There will be 12 ribbed walls in total.
The builders created a specific type of mortar that hardens within a day and that won’t shrink, expand, or collapse. They developed special algorithms to the double-curved walls, pre-researched to determine if they were feasible.
Those who operated the printer, controller, and mixing device were deep in concentration as they have only one chance to get it right. They prepared and checked everything – the temperature, the consistency of the material, the location of the wall, the electricity and water – before they finally press the button to go. There were many regulations to hurdle in order that a structure, just a hundred square meters in size, would be built.
How long did the construction of the Meeting Factory take? It was expected to take 10 days but it took a few more days longer. It is expected to finish imminently. It wasn’t the goal to do it as fast as possible. It was more important to do it right. In any case, the whole process will be much faster and cheaper next time. Several houses are set to be 3D-printed later this year in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, and the creators of the Meeting Factory believe 3D printing will become a reasonably standard building method within a short time.
Buildings of the Future to Rise in Seattle
While it might take a while for 3D printed structures to be common in key cities in the US, your 3D printing company in Seattle looks to the future that someday soon 3D printed buildings will change the landscape of city life.
