Using 3D Printing to Restore a Frank Lloyd Wright Building

The Florida Division of Historical Resources allocated a number of grants to preserve Children of the Sun, also known as the Florida Southern college campus, which is the site of Frank Lloyd Wright’s largest body of work in one place. A $50,000 grant toward restoring the thousands of signature Wright-designed cement blocks in the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel was allocated for a year-long project headed by architect Jeff Baker of Mesick Cohen Wilson Baker Architects. Baker supervised the restoration of Lloyd Wright’s cement block structures turning to the aid of 3D printers to replicate and replace what was once a tedious manual process. Using the Makerbot Replicator and the Rostock Max V2 to print fingers for the molds of the blocks, they were able to insert 2,000 colored glass tiles into the original blocks, restoring the original jeweled box effect. More details on this story may be found here: http://3dprint.com/14258/3d-printing-frank-lloyd-wright

Below is an image of the first building being restored:
http://3dprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/frank.jpg