Renowned designers like Benjamin Hubert have been incorporating concrete in their designs for several years now. As a designer, employing a certain material is one thing, and experimenting with it is another. When four Masters students from the Bartlett School of Architecture presented their Fossilized project in 2016, they showed how concrete structures can be 3-D printed. They developed a new technique which combines two methods of 3-D printing. Full, flat-surfaced concrete structures were first 3-D printed in 2015, but Amalgamma—Francesca Camilleri, Nadia Doukhi, Alvaro Lopez Rodriguez and Roman Strukov—succeeded in printing a more complex model.
Upscale audio company Master & Dynamic responded to a new design challenge this year: a concrete speaker. The material might minimize vibration due to its rigidity, but it fails at taming echoes. M&D concocted the perfect solution by mixing rock and stones with a handful of polymers, a secret recipe which results in a material that absorbs echoes perfectly. After developing the ideal concrete, M&D worked with architect David Adjaye to design the MA770 speaker.
Learn more about the project here.
