Beijing’s Laboratory for Creative Design (LCD) has been awarded the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest 3D printed architectural pavilion.
The unprecedented structure, dubbed ‘Vulcan’ was presented as part of Beijing Design Week, recently held at Parkview Green, one of the city’s premier retail destinations.
Led by architects Yu Lei and Xu Feng,LCD has developed a radical way of using the technology with the support of novel design techniques and construction methods applied on an architectural scale, designboom.com reported.
A total of 1,086 different 3D-printed constructive units comprise the eight-meter-long, three-meter-tall structure. It can be subdivided into three identical modules, thus making it flexible to fit the requirements of the exhibition site and activity area.
“Vulcan represents a new reality - that modern architects are able to achieve their ideal design quality from concept to construction using digital design and fabrication methodologies. This development will increasingly blur the boundaries between technology and art,” said Yu Lei.
The word ‘Vulcan’ is derived from Latin, which in English means volcano - a symbol for the unpredictable forces of nature, and the fragility of human civilization.
The arched pavilion - aesthetically akin to the mushroom cloud that forms during an eruption - took 30 days and 20 large-scale 3D printers to complete each of the units, then 15 people for 12 days to assemble the pieces on site into the whole pavilion.
“’Vulcan’ takes precedent from LCD’s long term research in the spatial form of cocoons, where we constantly search for suitable methods for 3D printing and its artistic reinterpretations,” the designing team explained. “In extrapolating the form from the cocoon’s biological parent body, we seek to combine the 3D printing and spatial construction processes with the activities at the Beijing international design week”.
