Clay-Printed Habitats

Notes for a proposed project on habitat structures made from robotically printed clay.

Questions and Consideration

What are relevant properties of McGeorge house?

What are the potentially useful attributes of 3D printing?

What has and has not been tried already?

What are the criteria for success?

Art project aiming for ecoliteracy or a habitat-structure designing aiming for nonhuman habitation or both?

Intended to scale up?

Audience? Intended for DIY uptake or integration into possible future industrial products?

What are the formal research outcomes? Design project? Conference presentation? Journal article?

Funding? Industrial partnership?

Possible Methods

1. Consider an intersection of capabilities of 3D clay printing (design space No. 1) with existing natural habitat structures (design space No. 2) and existing human-made habitat structures (design space No. 3)
2. Produce a review of best practice demonstrating unexplored opportunities
3. Run an exploratory workshop with relevant stakeholders to map practical options and possibilities for positive impact
4. Identify a set of experiments to demonstrate the possibility space for 3D clay printing for more-than-human design
5. If working at a specific site, produce an eco-cultural census of the site determining key stakeholders and intended stakeholder benefits
6. Establish a description of the relevant baseline by scanning/analysing existing natural precedents that can be compared with proposed alternatives
7. Produce prototypes
8. Assess prototypes in comparison with baseline natural structures and existing human designs
9. Install prototypes
10. Run an outreach workshop to inform possible relevant stakeholders about the potential of the design