Sep 9, 2014
Creative Commons: Ebyabe
The unique buildings of iconic American architect Frank Lloyd Wright is right now undergoing a high-tech restoration, thanks to 3D printing.
The Frank Lloyd Wright buildings located in the Florida Southern College is the largest single-site collection of the architects work in the world. Wright designed these twelve building, known as the Child of the Sun, as a "harmonious whole expressing the spirit of the college free from grandomania".
One of building, the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel was completed in 1941 as the first of 12 structures built during Wright's lifetime. The wall of the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel was made of the ornamental textile blocks that Wright designed for his experiment in modular housing.
Wright wrote in his autobiography that he chose to build with concrete blocks as they were "the cheapest (and ugliest) thing in the building world," and he wanted to see "what could be done with that gutter-rat." He sought to develop an inexpensive and simple method of construction that would enable ordinary people to build their own homes with stacked blocks. By adding ornamental designs to mass-produced blocks, Wright hoped the blocks could become a "masonry fabric capable of great variety in architectural beauty."
The Annie Pfeiffer Chapel was mostly constructed with student labor between 1938-1941. The 6,000 blocks have 46 unique designs and they were cast from sedimentary rock (coquina) and concrete and then pieced together.
Detail of Annie Pfeiffer Chapel.
Unfortunately, most of the blocks on this wall are showing the effects of weather and time. The cost to recreate the blocks by hand proved prohibitively expensive. But 3D printers fixed the problem. 3D printing technology is being utilized to replace the painstakingly hand-crafted molds previously used to make the blocks.
Restoration architect Jeff Baker of Mesick Cohen Wilson Baker Architects is leading the project which will eventually replace most of the textile blocks on the west wall of the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel.
A $50,000 grant from the Florida Division of Historical Resources and a $350,000 grant provided by the Save America's Treasurers Program of the National Park Service helped fund this ongoing 12-month project. The grants were used to analyze the deterioration of the textile blocks and create new molds for their replacement.
According to Baker, the molds for west wall blocks are the most difficult to produce of all the blocks on campus due to their complexity. But with the aid of a Makerbot and a Rostock Max V2 3D printer they were able to produce new molds in exacting architectural detail.
About 2,000 distinctive colored glass tiles were created and inserted into the manufactured blocks as part of the grant using 3D printed elements and handmade parts, significantly reducing the cost.
All images via design-milk.
"The success found on this project is a milestone not only in the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings on the FSC campus but also for similar textile block projects designed by Wright and other architects throughout the nation," Baker said.
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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This is stupid ! It would have been easier to model the block in 3D and then carved a stone block with a CNC. > exact replica > Quicker + faithful to the design of F.L. Wright 3D printing is not always THE solution. It depends on the job.
dan wrote at 9/10/2014 12:17:09 AM:
Amzing what this 3d Printer can do, absolut amzing. i am a beginner in 3dPrinting but is a lot of fun. i buy a witbox black here but now i want buy a more proffessional Printer can somone help me? I see a lot of Printers what is the best i dont no.
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