Stone Spray Robot – a fabrication robot that makes architecture out of soil.
The sand castles creation is not anymore an art work. In a desire to find “new eco-friendly, efficient and innovative ways to print architecture in 3D”, a team of researchers of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) invented Stone Spray Robot, a robotic 3D printer that produces architecture out of sand/ soil. The sculptural forms are created from a mixture of dirt and sand, in combination with a binder component.
The revolutionary construction method uses soil as the base material and a liquid binder to solidify the soil granules. And uses a jet spray system to deposit the mix of soil and binder, for constructing architectural shapes.
The creative process is controlled by a computer. The robot managed to grow an object of 200 x 200 x 100, which consists of 23 arcs.
In fact Stone Spray Robot is ecological. It requires a very little amount of energy to operate. It can be powered by solar energy only. The solidifier material is as well eco-friendly, it is composed out of LEED Certified components.
The Sand Wall experiment showed that the the system can be aplied in the architectural scale. The result represents a part of the wall. It is structurally strong and can support not only itself but even bear a load.
