How it began
The Office of the Future was unveiled in Dubai in May 2016 as a working office for the Dubai Future Foundation. The architecture firm Gensler and the engineers Syska Hennessy Group and Thornton Tomasetti worked on it, and the Chinese construction company WinSun supplied the printing system through its Dubai subsidiary. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers reported it as said to be the world's first fully functional 3D-printed office building. Guinness World Records later recognized the foundation for the first 3D-printed commercial building.
How it works
A single printer 20 feet high, 120 feet long and 40 feet wide, fitted with a robotic arm, laid down the building parts layer by layer. The material was a mix of special reinforced concrete, glass-fiber-reinforced gypsum and fiber-reinforced plastic. Printing took 17 days. The parts were then installed on the site in two days, and about three months went into the remaining building work, interiors and landscaping.
What changed first
The building has 2,700 square feet of floor space and gives office and meeting room for up to 16 people. Reported cost was 140,000 US dollars. The project used about half the labor of a conventional building of similar size. It was first used by staff of the technology museum then under construction on the same site.
What lasted
The office was built as part of a campaign to present Dubai and the United Arab Emirates as centers for 3D printing, and it served as a public demonstration that a printed structure could be occupied and used daily. The Dubai Future Foundation states a goal of having 25 percent of new buildings in the emirate 3D printed.
