Branch Technology playhouse
Partnering with Gould Turner Group Architects, Branch Technology used the largest free form 3D printer in the world to fabricate Casa d’Espana.
Branch Technology, a company committed to modernising the architecture industry, has justified its intentions with a 3D-printed open air children’s pavilion in Cheekwood Botanical Gardens, Nashville, Tennessee.
Partnering with Gould Turner Group Architects, Branch Technology used the largest free form 3D printer in the world to fabricate Casa d’Espana. The design of the children’s playhouse was inspired by Antoni Gaudi’s mechanical use of the parabolic arch and organic forms. In Brach Technology’s pavilion, archways shoot from the ground and conjoin in in a middle ground at roughly 2.5 metres above ground, leaving plenty of room for children to play underneath.
The idea for this construction came about after a discussion within Branch Technology about how 3D printing could be used as a scaffold for normal construction materials and how these could be added into a 3D-printed matrix.
“The way we (begun) using robots was looking at how you can freeform 3D print and with traditional CNC there’s limitations with the build volume and orientations inherent to a six-axis or seven-axis robot, gives us the ability to have amazing flexibility on the orientations – things that no other mechanism can really produce – that type of geometric flexibility,” said Platt Boyd, Founder and CEO of Branch Technology. “Kuka were really leading the pack on research and development into new robotic means and methods. They were the one in the world I know of that makes a mobile robotic platform that (has) sub-millimetre accuracy.”
Cheekwood Botanical Gardens’ newest addition was printed directly from Gould Turner’s 3D design model. Large scale components were printed at Branch’s shop and assembled on site. The customisation of the technology allowed for each archway to be uniquely shaped. Additionally, the playhouse nestles into the sloping terrain via custom shaped feet derived from digital scans of the terrain. These bases can be removed, allowing the structure to relocated to different locations.
Branch Tech playhouse 2
A bird's-eye view of the 3D-printed playhouse
To enable Branch and Gould Turner to create a sculpture that spanned such a wide space, a specialist printer was needed. Fortunately, Branch had just the device.
“(The machine we used) is the largest free form 3D printer in the world, giving it a print envelope of 25ft wide x 58ft long,” added Boyd. “We’ve never run into a constraint on space so we can produce almost anything anybody comes up with. When you can think systematically how we create a building and can integrate geometries and materials and different configurations it opens up all kinds of possibilities for very creative thinking.”
Interaction between Branch and Gould Turner all went through the computer. This communication method allowed them to easily access the 3D files, tweak the angles and alter the different construction constraints of the exterior envelope. Similar to Branch, Gould Turner were more than happy with the final result.
“The organic structures that we can create and have printed are so different to what you would build drawing lines on a piece of paper,” said Rebecca L. Shew, a designer at Gould Turner Group Architects. “We as architects think in three dimensions, but people who we work with don’t necessarily always think that way and so it allows us to take these ideas in our head and make it something real. People can look at it, move it around, see what it is.”
Branch Technology’s 3D-printed pavilion came about thanks to the International Playhouses competition sponsored from the Cheekwood Botanical Gardens in Nashville. The playhouse now situated in the gardens is a direct result of Branch’s innovation and determination to advance design and architecture.
“(We’re) giving creative license to designers to say ‘come up with whatever you may’”, said Boyd. “And when they see this their eyes go crazy and they’re like ‘oh my gosh, anything is possible’. We’re inventing a new way to build.”
