How 3D printing combined with traditional Chinese wooden construction is helping resurrect a century-old village in rural China
- A University of Hong Kong team is helping give new life to abandoned houses as part of revitalisation plans for Nanlong village in Guizhou province
- For the first house to be transformed, concrete additions 3D-printed on-site allowed for the accommodation of new rooms and a second floor
Who would have thought that 3D printing technology could work hand in hand with traditional wooden construction to kick-start the resurrection of a century-old village in rural China?
Architects John Lin Chun-han and Lidia Ratoi, professor and assistant professor, respectively, in the department of architecture at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), explored the potential of such an unlikely marriage and came up with what they call “The Traditional House of the Future”.
The project is part of revitalisation plans for Nanlong village, in the country’s southwest Guizhou province, where hundreds of dilapidated wooden houses have been abandoned.
The pooling of Lin and Ratoi’s areas of expertise – Lin’s as a founding partner of Rural Urban Framework (RUF), a non-profit enterprise within HKU, and Ratoi’s in robotic fabrication and material sustainability – was, like so many recent innovations, a product of the pandemic.
“As Year 2 architecture teachers, we’d received funding to take students to engage in a real-life project in mainland [China],” Lin says. “But Covid restrictions meant we couldn’t travel, and the three-year deadline for the funding was approaching.”
