Places and Spaces: Is 3D printing good for landscape architecture?

26 May 2011

Does quick literal production help us create? Or are we better off using our imagination? Is this somehow different than larger models?

Anonymous said...: Good questions. I've been thinking about the same issues. Plastic's 'materialness' is lacking in many qualities; it holds little beauty for me currently. Thus constructing with it, particularly by spraying it, also has little beauty. But, as you suggest, 3-d printing might be a quick way to comprehend/test our design forms in true physical 3-d, rather than virtually on a 2-d screen, or painstakingly and awkwardly through stacking chipboard. So, as a fast, easy representation, yes, 3-d plastic printing is a good method for exploration, but as a final end-product, it would likely have little beauty.

I would like to design a ‘sandpit’ cnc printer/router that moves sand around a box and sprays adhesives to set the form as it goes. It would route out the hard-edged forms to make clean lines. This process would be both additive and subtractive.; May 27, 2011 at 3:50 PM