1.3 Research

RESEARCH

Why did we fall back on shrinking the houses, building, overall architecture. Is massive and big structures is what denotes architecture? Why not go ‘ Nano Architecture’?

Yes, we have achieved many types and styles of architecture over these centuries but the size is same, nonetheless today’s architecture is more simple shaped compared to the old complex styles of architecture. Why never attempt to shrink it down? Imagine carrying your whole house with you while going a vacation around the world. You could never feel homesick ever. And i am not just talking about tents and temperary houses. The very house you live in now, the very house you grew your entire childhood in, you can have it anytime anywhere. How would be a world where we could carry everything we own in our pockets? HOW DO WE ACHIEVE THIS? The members of a submarine crew shrink to tiny size and are implanted into the body of a sick man in the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, in the hopes of repairing damage to his brain from the inside. We still haven’t mastered the shrink ray after half a century, but the idea of deploying microscopic technology within the body to promote health and help recovery in illness and injury is one that’s being researched – and actively developed. Well we have been watching movies and TV series where we have came across theories of shrinking or atomic compression like in the movie Ant-Man. Well we are still really far away from achieving something like that but it aint impossible.

Well, after researching in the depth there could be multiple theories how we can achieve this, lets say for the sake of the anime Dragonball that we will be using capsules to store all our data which can be carried in our pockets anywhere we go hassle-free. So these capsules could have our entire house in it. The ways of fitting an building into a small capsule could be; Compressed space,Atomic compression and molecular blueprint. Spacetime teleportation and atomic compression could be a way but looking at current technology we are reaching heights in terms of 3D printing and Nanotech which seems more promising and practical.

HOW FAR ARE WE ON THE 3D PRINTING? Well, we know this that buildings now can be printed and we are having a huge advancement in the 3D Printing field. In the next few decades, we will reach the pinnacle of 3D printing technology. By next decade, every house would be having an 3D printer and soon you can download food from internet and print it from your chair.

What about buildings? There are many firms and companies all over the world, competiting each other against their technology and who is going to achieve the best, fast and cheap solution for housing. A Chinese company now plans to print a seven-meter high intricate temple using 3D printing technology. In Texas, a whole neighbourhood was printed for the low income people. These 3D-printed homes can be built for less than $4,000 in just 24 hours. It produce almost zero carbon waste and remains functional in terrains where there may be a lack of power, water, or typical labor infrastructure.

Figure 7: Food 3d printing technology

Figure 8: Applications of 3D Printing.

Figure: Project Milestone is a five-house project in the Dutch city of Eindhoven. The first completed house already has occupants – Harrie Dekkers and Elize Lutz –and is the first legally habitable 3D-printed house in Europe.

Figure 9: First 3D Printed house in Europe

3D Printing could be one of the potential solution to achieve our aim of an house capsule. The capsule could contain encoded blueprint data which when connected to the nano printer over the site would give the instructions and the printer would just start building your house. But even as it is, 3DP technology do have some limitation which in coming years hopefully would be solved.

Currently the 3D Printers cannot print the house 100% themselves, it needs an human assist for assembling the horizontal members, so the printers are mostly good for vertical casting. Another is, the machines for now cost a lot of fortunes and would take lot of space. The technology we want to achieve should be having total portability and could be build anywhere in the world, from city to countryside, even jungles or any land we wish to build. Thus 3D Printing does have potential to change the world in coming years about how we construct houses and buildings. It should be the future before the house capsules technology comes and maybe the bridge between now and what we want to achieve.

I would say the most likely route would be nano machines. The capsules would have tiny robots in them that would be programmed to create the desired item out of whatever material was immediately available. A lot can be built out of carbon , which is readily available in dirt and rocks. If they could build using carbon nano tubes which are stronger than steal, they could make almost anything. We will discuss this further in the coming chapters.