Category Archives: Lecture Series

Tonight at IAAC, Enrico Dini, an italian civil engineer, gave us a lecture explaining how he developed his idea of printing houses. Enrico showed some images about his first attemps, and then he explained how he figured out the whole process. Finally a debate took place and several students could ask and comment some of the issues that the lecture rise up.

3D Printing applied to a large scale is a new Construction Science.
The pages of this book are all blank and need to be written from scratch.
Building through 3D Printing means : a new machine; but, what embodiment? how big? How tall? How fast? How accurate?
A new process using new materials or old materials in a new way, but what binders? what fibers? what additives? What methods to achieve structural performance?
A new Building technique : just one? Maybe many? Which should be adopted first?
But the biggest question is : what should be done with the 3D printer, a new tool for a new architectural language? what to print? what to sell? How to design?
Freedom of Creation:
Is it really true? What are the constraints? How to solve practical matters? Printing on site or off site?
Enrico Dini has spent the past seven years facing hundreds of questions and answering roughly just a few of them.
During his lecture Enrico will explain the story of a challenging, painful, exciting invention process, still on going and full of surprises, mistakes and discoveries.
He found his way: mimicking nature.

Enrico Dini at IaaC

Lecture: “D-Shape: petrified algorythms”
30th of May // 19:30 // IAAC Auditorium // C/Pujades 102 BARCELONA

Enrico Dini is an Italian civil engineer who spent most of his career in automation and robotics for the footwear industry.
Since the late 90′s Enrico came into contact with rapid prototyping techniques used to facilitate the design of the shoes.
In 2003, while he was 3D printing a shoe sole, Enrico had a vision of this technique applied on a large scale and imagined a new free form architecture. Enrico decided to return to its original skill enriched by his experience in robotics and since then has devoted his life to developing a new construction technique based on the principles of stereolitograpy. In 2007 helped from his trusted brother Riccardo, Enrico tested successfully his large scale D-Shape printer prototype and the following year he printed the Radiolaria, the first free-form building structure ever. Today Enrico Dini is immersed in developing D-Shape, 3D Printing Building technology to bring innovation to the architecture and construction industries.