We’ve followed the WASP project and its focus on developing additive manufacturing solutions for sustainable construction with interest over the past year or so. Its latest construction project, Gaia, is 3D-printed using the new Crane WASP technology with natural materials from the surrounding area.
WASP presented Gaia at the ‘Viaggio a Shamballa’ event and the ‘A call to save the world’ conference. It uses raw soil as the main binder of the additive manufacturing mixture and can thus, according to the company, ‘be considered a new eco-sustainable architectural model with particular attention to the use of natural waste materials, coming from the rice production chain and oriented to the construction of particularly efficient masonry from a bioclimatic and healthy point of view.’ The research for this project was carried out in collaboration with RiceHouse.
In order to develop Gaia, RiceHouse supplied the vegetable fibres through which WASP has developed a compound composed of 25% of soil taken from the site (30% clay, 40% silt and 30% sand), 40% from straw chopped rice, 25% rice husk and 10% hydraulic lime.
According to the company, Gaia’s environmental impact is near-zero. It does not require heating or an air-conditioning system, as it is able to maintain a consistent indoor temperature summer or winter. The bioclimatic project developed by RiceHouse utilises the passive contribution of the sun thanks to the building’s south-west-facing position. Furthermore, its roof is made from wood with insulation in lime+chaff (RH300), which is light with good thermal properties that enable it to reach an energy requirement equal to a class A4. The monolithic wall printed in 3D is finished internally with a shaving clay-lamina (RH400), smoothed and oiled with linseed oils.
Tiziana Monterisi, RiceHouse's CEO, commented: “Gaia was made exclusively with natural materials such as raw soil, shredded straw, husk, and wood and is highly performing from an energy and environmental point of view.”
The external casing, completely 3D printed on-site through the Crane WASP, has been designed to integrate natural ventilation systems and thermo-acoustic insulation systems in a single solution. The ability to apply this computation design process to construction has been made possible thanks to the precision and speed of the 3D technology, which obtains complex geometries that are difficult to replicate using traditional construction systems. It took 10 days to create the 3d printed casing, with a total of 30 square metres of wall with a thickness of 40 cm and a total material cost of €900.
On the basis of the data retrieved from the Gaia project, WASP says it is possible to conceive new economic scenarios in which one hectare of cultivated paddy field can become 100 square metres of built area.