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Apartment building in Wallenhausen, 2021
At the end of 2020, we built Germany's first multi-family house using 3D printing in Wallenhausen, Bavaria.
Just a few kilometers from the PERI 3D Construction headquarters, we erected Europe's first 3D-printed apartment building in Wallenhausen. After just 72 hours of printing and a six-week construction period, the shell of the approximately 380 m², three-story building with five apartments was completed. The project marks a significant milestone in the development of 3D construction printing in the construction industry, as the building's walls were entirely manufactured on-site using a BOD2 3D construction printer. Just one year after the completion of the 3D printing, all apartments have been successfully rented.
Location
Project category
Residential construction
Pure printing time
72 hours
Project participants
Michael Rupp Construction Company GmbH
Heidelberg Materials
Mühlich, Fink & Partner BDA
Engineering office Schiessl Gehlen Sodeikat
IMPRESSIONS OF THE PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION
Premiere: A 3D-printed apartment building is being built
Bigger is better
In Wallenhausen, we used our largest configuration of the COBOD BOD2 3D printer to date, so that relocation on the construction site was not necessary.
Sensibly layered
The walls of the apartment building were cast from the top edge of the floor slab. The exterior walls were designed with three shells: one cavity is filled with loose-fill insulation, the other – where structurally necessary – is filled with in-situ concrete.
There's movement
You can find some impressions of the construction site summarized here in a short video.
Six weeks in sixty seconds
The basement and foundation are in place – then we turned on our time-lapse camera. Here you can see the entire printing process from the first to the last layer. The total printing time of 72 hours was spread over six weeks to allow time for other trades and the ceilings.
The result is impressive
The apartment building impresses with its modern interior, which uses unplastered wall sections as a stylistic element to create a unique atmosphere.
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Requirements and solutions
Requirements
The construction site in the small, rather traditional village of Wallenhausen is located in a prominent location. Therefore, a more conventional look was chosen for this project. The long, straight walls pose an increased risk of cracking, for which a solution had to be found. Since printing was scheduled to start in the fall, and the goal was to complete printing before winter, given a new building material and a lack of experience, only six weeks were planned for the construction of the walls.
Solutions
The rather simple architecture from the outside was enhanced with modern touches to combine the traditional with the innovative. Several expansion joints were integrated into the exterior walls to better segment the printed sections and prevent cracking. Because a new building material was used, numerous tests, such as tensile and bending tests, had to be submitted before printing could begin. To save time and money, other trades were simply integrated into the printing process. For example, the printer automatically omitted recesses for conduits and other cables. The interior walls were largely plastered, leaving the printed appearance exposed as a stylistic element in selected places.
Customer benefit
The fully approved apartment building was printed just in time before the onset of winter and finished the following year. The tenants moved in on time and live here for rents that are at the lower end of the local average. 3D-printed tables and the partially exposed printed structures in the interior create an aesthetic that quickly makes the tenants of the five apartments feel at home. Future projects can also benefit from the numerous tests, such as tensile and flexural tests, that must be conducted for the new material, as many of them can be easily replicated.
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