Winsun 3D Prints 6-Story Apartment Building and More

Chinese Company Winsun is at it again. Remember back in April we showed you all the 10 3D printed houses that the company had constructed? Well, now they have printed out an entire 6-story building, in additional to a villa which is quite staggering to look at. The process uses an environmentally friendly, recycled construction waste material which is extruded out of a gigantic 3Dprinter off sight. the team then hauls the pieces to the build site and pieces it all together. Below you will find a picture of the 3D printed building which is a staggering 6 stories high.
http://3dprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/b51.png
More details on Winsn's progress can be found here: http://3dprint.com/38144/3d-printed-apartment-building/

Well, even though they aren't printed in-place and have facade pieces to cover up the layer look, these are definitely exciting proof-of concept pieces. The technology may not have as much application in the West, but China has had a real need for consistent building standards, and a need to move away from brick construction. (for social reasons I won't go into)

I can see 3D printed buildings becoming an iconic architectural style in China (and perhaps other similar countries) in the next decade.

I don't expect facade pieces to go away for a long time. Walls are usually made of several layers of different kinds of materials anyway. The thermal properties of all-concrete walls are terrible anyway.

I agree on the facade pieces, but I'll just put up another example from their website of a wall they made that really creatively shows off the 3D printed nature rather than hiding it.
http://www.yhbm.com/uploadfile/2015/...4020020796.jpg
Now granted, it's not impossible to make that wall with traditional concrete molds, but it would have been much more time consuming and expensive. With the printer making the panels, they could vary the pattern, even making it into a continuous mural if they wanted to. Some of the pictures also show printed wall panels that look like they're filled with some kind of spray-in foam used either as a removable support or as insulation.

Hey Feign,

Why do you think that this tech may not have much application in the West? The cost of labor is much higher here and so the savings will correspondingly be much greater too. Plus the exterior design looks fine for a low to middle budget building.

I'm actually in the process of having a new home constructed. I could certainly see 3D printing used for the exterior walls. It would be a time saver, and a cost saver, however for finishing they wil have to rely on more traditional means for quite a while. People just don't want ragged homes. Give this technology another 15 years and perhaps there wil be interior finishing methods as well which can be 3D printed. Exciting stuff indeed, although it would probably be easier to cast these walls offsite and bring them in, just like Winsun did (3d printed them in pieces then hauled them in.

I can see 3D printed buildings becoming a thing also in Western countries. Maybe a lot of countries try to do it the conventional way still, but I see this changing in the future for sure.
There is a lot of potential for sure here too.

I have a business, trying to expand, and I'm seriously looking into using this technology also. It can be really cost efficient, and you can have a look how the building will look like when it's finished.