As 3D printed construction continues to make headlines, with buildings being fabricated quickly from large extruding machines, the material of choice for these projects is usually concrete, due to its history in mainstream construction and its ability to ooze out of a large printhead. A company called Progressive Innovations has already reinvented 3D house printing for the sustainable era and created an 3D printing-inspired earthbag laying machine.
Before today, I’d never heard of earthbag construction, a potentially eco-friendly technique for assembling buildings. The process involves filling large sacks, usually made out of the same polypropylene material used to transport rice, hemp, or burlap, with materials sourced from the immediate construction area, which can include things like clay, sand, gravel, volcanic rock, pumice, rice hulls, and subsoils. These bags are placed, usually by hand, layer by layer until an entire structure has been built. While other materials, like cement and barbed wire, may be used to increase the stability of the structure, earthbag construction is said to be a low-cost, less energy intensive method for building than other methods, in that it doesn’t require the transportation of materials to the build site or even much in the way of producing those materials in the first place.…
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