of your own eyes. The UCLA and Chinese projects are adapting the 3D process to concrete; which is extruded out of special nozzles to create the structure from the ground up. “Contour Crafting is a fabrica- tion process by which large-scale parts can be fabricated quickly in a layer-by-layer fashion,” the UCLA website concretecrafting.org re- ports. “The chief advantages of the Contour Crafting process over existing technologies are the su- perior surface finish that is real- ized and the greatly enhanced speed of fabrication.” “The success of the technol- ogy stems from the automated use of age-old tools normally wielded by hand, combined with conventional robotics and an innovative approach to building three-dimensional objects that allows rapid fabrication times. Ac- tual scale civil structures such as houses may be built by CC.” “More recently, the direction of de- velopment has been in the use of var- ious ceramics (including piezo electric actuators) and construction materials. Another high potential application is construction of civil structures such as houses. Emergency and low in- come housing construction fields are being considered by various entities. Also, the application of CC in building adobe structures using inexpensive tial to reshape the entire indus- try – and the speed of change here has been phenomenal. And the 3D printing may have more immediate application with specialized part or compo- nent design, reducing fabrica- tion costs and speeding up construction in innovative man- ners. Where to start . . . materials is being pursued in conjunc- tion with the CalEarth organization.” “As for the future development di- rection of CC, a relatively large multi- disciplinary research team at the University of Southern California will be investigating the application of the technology in construction of modern civil structures, construction of struc- tures on the moon and Mars, and in fine arts on the creation of large ce- ramic sculptures.” Of course, architects, engineers and contractors probably have more down-to-earth goals than building Martian structures, but undoubtedly the new technologies have the poten- Probably the best starting point for anyone exploring these concepts would be to im- merse themselves in BIM, ob- taining some training, software and experience to develop the capacity to work within the new building models. At the same time, you can quickly develop and im- plement cloud-based collaborative techniques, perhaps with some sim- ple security protocols (which could be as simple as setting rules for sensitive content that should not be put on the cloud without security measures.) The other stuff – whether it be aug- mented reality, wearable technology or 3D printing – can perhaps wait a while; but once you have the BIM tools installed, they are natural exten- sions. A brave new world awaits you if you are willing to travel into construc- tion technology's future. www.threadsoflife.ca 8 – February - March 2015 — The Canadian Design and Construction Report