המלון הראשון בעולם שהודפס בתלת ממד

3D printing technology and the hospitality industry are converging in the West Texas desert. It's fair to say we will be the first 3D printed hotel in the world. Here on the grounds of El Cosmico, a 21-acre hotel and campground, an industrial-sized 3D printer is extruding layer after layer of concrete mixture to form the walls of two new model units. The plan is to extend the site by 40 extra acres to include 43 hotel units and 18 residential homes. 3D printed by Icon, an Austin, Texas-based 3D printing company. El Cosmico owner and hotelier Liz Lambert is inspired by the process. I've never been able to build with such little constraint and such fluidity and just the curves and the domes and the parabolas. It's a crazy way to build. Yeah, 3D printing gives you a lot more room to experiment into, or even if you're sort of like quite confident to do, more organic forms and shapes. And sort of as you walk in right away, you see this is going to be a three-bedroom unit. The 3D printed buildings will feature domes, arches, and curved walls, architectural features that would normally be too expensive to replicate on a large scale using traditional construction, according to Lambert. The single-story units are printed by Icon's Vulcan, a 46-and-a-half-feet-wide 3D printer, standing almost 16 feet tall and weighing nearly five tons. A print technician monitors Vulcan as its robotic arm and nozzle glide through the work site, applying a special cement-based proprietary mixture called Lavacrete. You know, the base mixture, it's a little bit secret, so I won't give you all the formula, so to speak, but we've restricted ourselves to a list of sort of globally and ubiquitously available materials so that we can do this all over the world and do it affordably all over the world. A typical three-person crew for these projects include a print technician keeping track of That's a stark contrast to typical construction crews. And while many are energized by the new process, Milad Bazli, a science and technology lecturer at Charles Darwin University in Australia, says the automation of 3D printed construction could displace skilled laborers like masons. From the social point of view and the effect in the economy in terms of the local jobs, Still, Lambert is excited to be a trailblazer. People will start to become familiar with 3D printing, but a hotel, I think, is always a great way to be exposed to something you might not be exposed to at home.