JOEL JOHNSON — Speaking of robots, New Scientist is carrying word about a machine designed by Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of Southern California that could ‘print’ houses directly from blueprints. Sucking in a slurry of concrete-like building material and squirting it out in layers, like elementary school pottery, the ‘contour crafter’ could build houses without stop from start to finish.
The prototype uses cement, but Khoshnevis believes a straw-and-mud mixture might work as well. If the first test house (scheduled for 2005) goes well, it’s possible that the robot could be used to build shapes that cannot be built via normal methods.
This could be the best of both worlds: cheap, affordable housing, customized by each owner. Could this lead to a personal-architecture Renaissance?
