About Publications Research Teaching

3D Printed Earth

One week HACKATHON

RESEARCH / 2024

This hackathon aims to provide an immersive, hands-on exploration into various earth-based materials and their digital fabrication through 3D printing.

Drawing inspiration from traditional techniques like adobe and exploring speculative geometries across different scales, we aim to envision potential futures for earth materials.

For the final stage, 10 students collaborated in teams to create inventive earth-based design fabrications.

Location

Natural Materials Lab (Columbia University GSAPP, New York City, USA)

Collaborators

Prof. Lola Ben-Alon (PI, Columbia University), Prof. Shiho Kawashima (Co-Pi, Columbia Engineering), Yierfan Mardan (Columbia Engineering), Samuel Armistead (CU Boulder)

Research assistants:

EunJin Shin

Students:

Jennah Christina Jones, Danyel Hueyopan, Eddy Voltaire, Shrey Bindesh Patel and Soo Jin Yim for the bench design and fabrication, and Ahamed Abrar Kulam Mohamed Saleem, Christina Huang, Hui Chen, Saumil Mehul Sanghavi, Simar Kaur Kochhar the table design and fabrication.

Contribution

  • Supervised and trained master students in digital fabrication and during the 3D printing sessions
  • Supervised students during the design phase to assure the printability of 3D models
  • Defined the extrudable material mixtures (in terms of earth, natural fibers and biopolymers) used during the workshop
  • Prepared the Grasshopper script to generate the GCODE for 3D-printing with the SCARA Elite v2 robotic arm.

Publications

O.B Carcassi, Y. Maierdan, S. Kawashima, & L. Ben-Alon, (2024), Recyclability of Earth-Fiber Materials for 3D Printing, Proceedings of the IASS 2024 Symposium Redefining the Art of Structural Design August 26-30, 2024, Zurich Switzerland, DOI: https://app.iass2024.org/files/IASS_2024_Paper_614.pdf

Photo Credits

Jennah Christina Jones, Danyel Hueyopan, Eddy Voltaire, Shrey Bindesh Patel and Soo Jin Yim for the bench design and fabrication, and Ahamed Abrar Kulam Mohamed Saleem, Christina Huang, Hui Chen, Saumil Mehul Sanghavi, Simar Kaur Kochhar