These snap-together wall parts may help to change the construction industry, as “3D printing will become the new normal for architecture”.

That’s the view of the Zachary Schoch who created the printed wall, which can be put together in fewer than 10 minutes.

The S-Wall was first demonstrated in California earlier this year, took fewer than 18 hours to print and when is fully erected stands at over 10 feet tall.

Schoch believes that 3D printed architecture will eventually become a standard process for those working in in architecture.

The demonstration wall was created out of three separately printed pieces that are built from high strength ABS components. It’s said, by Schoch, that the clip-together construction method means that there is “no fundamental difference” between the traditional separation of the floor, walls, and roof.

He also said that due to the hollow nature of the walls, it would be possible to integrate mechanical systems, such as pipes, into them.

We asked Schoch how he came up with the design and what he envisioned for the future of 3D printed construction.

Q: What sort of a role do you see 3D printing having with architecture, and what advantages do snap-together pieces give a designer or those working in construction?

A: 3D printing will have a huge role in architecture; entire buildings will be 3D printed in the future.

The advantage of a snap together system to those working in construction is that they will now be working in assembly, which is fundamentally more efficient than construction.

Q: Currently 3D printers that are being involved in construction processes are typically very large (see China, for example) and are much bigger than the structures they produce – how could you see this modular kind approach being useful in comparison?

A: With a few notable exceptions (six axis robots, drone construction etc) all machines produce items smaller than themselves, even including plants and animals.

Making snap-together or other easily assembled components is the logical way to scale up the output of a 3D printer.

Without that the machine loses its economic feasibility, either because you must move the contraption at great expense from place to place (the sheer size of the machine makes that overly expensive), or if you’re not moving the machine, the cost to transport the huge components is unreasonable.

Today in the United States the largest reasonable print volume is what can be easily transported by flatbed truck, which is exactly what the prefab and modular construction components today generally max out at.

For projects that are driven by other constraints, the sizes of the printed components can be varied accordingly; for this project my component size was limited both by the maximum print volume of my Euclid 3D printer (1m x 1m x 1.2m) and the maximum print time that I wanted for each component (six hours or less).

Originally we were printing each component much wider (taller when in the print bed) at the 1.2m maximum from a material other than ABS; unfortunately that material proved to be unsuitable for this scale of application and we were forced to revert to ABS at the last minute. Staying true to our ethos of never printing at less than 1:1 scale, we simply took a narrower slice of the building at 0.3m while maintaining the plan envelope of 1m x 1m.

Q: What applications could you see this technique being used for?

A: This snap-together technique and its inevitable future advancements will be used to produce full scale architecture.

I expect it to take a similar route as other new building methods; the temporary pavilions will come first, followed closely by large-scale interior architecture projects for boutique stores, next will be 3D printed permanently installed small buildings (offices and micro homes), ultimately and with a fair amount of competition and turmoil, 3D printing will find its way into the traditional architectural practice.

In the coming years, innovative processes from many other people, along with the snap-together and rapid printing techniques that I have started to develop, will completely redefine the way that architecture is conceptualised and practiced.

3D printing will become the new normal for architecture.

Q: If you are going to develop the process and final product further in the future what changes do you envision; what could you do to improve upon what you’ve already done?

A: There are couple of areas are of interest for improvement.

First are the details of the connections and the overall structure itself.

For what we have built so far the design works perfectly; but we still must extend the existing details to other pieces and print larger assemblies to test our assumptions; eventually if things take off there will need to be professional loading and environmental tests.

The second area of development is materials.

Moving forward, the materials used to 3D print our pieces should probably be biodegradable, depending on the intended use of the component and other factors of course; at the very least in the near future we should be using plastics that are derived from renewable resources.

More broadly, as the processes of architectural creation become faster through the use of 3D printing, the desired lifespan of the architecture that is created will naturally be reduced.

In many situations building should be 3D printed from biodegradable plastics.