3D printer to create a house of infinity

A Dutch architect has designed a house "with no beginning or end" to be built using the world's biggest 3D printer, harnessing technology that might one day be used to print houses on the moon.

Janjaap Ruijssenaars, 39, of Universe Architecture, in Amsterdam, wants to print a Möbius strip-shaped building with about 1100m² of floor space using a huge D-Shape printer.

The printer, designed by Italian Enrico Dini, can print up to almost a 6m² x 6m², using a computer to add layers 5mm to 10 mm thick.

Ruijssenaars said the building could serve as a home or a museum and would have parts usually made from concrete printed using broken up rocks and an emulsion binding. Steel and glass would form the facade.

"It's our ambition to have the first printed house. This printer has made art and objects for sea defences, but this is the first time it will be used to build something that can be lived in," he said.

Ruijssenaars explained that the plan had not initially been to print the building but the hi-tech medium turned out to be the most appropriate.

"We started to ask if a building could be like a landscape, if we could make a building that would not harm the landscape, or at least learn from the landscape."

The Möbius-strip shaped result bears a striking resemblance to the art of another Dutchman, 20th-century designer and illustrator MC Escher.

When trying to make a small model of the building, Ruijssenaars realised that, whatever the material used to build it, from paper to lead, ". you have to make a strip and then bend it in order to make this Möbius strip".

"But, with a 3D printer, and even a small model, we could make the whole structure from bottom to top without anyone seeing where it is beginning or ending," he said.

Working with Dutch mathematician and artist Rinus Roelofs, and with Dini in Italy, "we put the whole thing in the computer", the architect said.

A Brazilian national park has expressed interest in the building, which would cost about $5.3-million to construct, the architect said, or it could be built as a private home in the US.

The project would take about 18 months to build and the printer "might be active for half a year" churning out components, Ruijssenaars said.