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Digital Planet: 3-D Printed House

Factual: Science & Nature

KamerMaker

16/04/2013

3-D Printed House

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, 3-D Printed House

Printing out and making a canal house in Amsterdam

Step inside the 3-D printer that will print a house. Take a virtual singing lesson courtesy of York Minster. And just how smart is the smart city of Songdo?

3-D printed house
In a short story by Jorge Luis Borges a fastidious cartographer begins to unfold an enormous map of a region which he has drawn to the exact 1:1 dimensions of that region. Borges's story comes to mind when you stand in front of the giant 3-D printer in Amsterdam that is going to print a house.  The machine will not modestly 3-D print the usual - a cup or a piece of jewellery, but an actual building.  The KamerMaker 3-D printer is fashioned from the carcass of a shipping container and is six metres tall.  Gareth Mitchell travels to Amsterdam to interview the DUS architects behind this project, Hedwig Heinsman and Hans Vermeulen.  Mitchell hears that the plan is to have printed the façade of the building by the end of the year.
(Photo: Hans Vermeulen and Hedwig Heinsman of DUS Architects with Gareth Mitchell in front of the KamerMaker)

Virtual Singing Studio
16 April is World Voice Day and this year for the first time there are many linked events across the globe, including a global choral concert which starts in New Zealand and ends in Hawaii.  The University of York is hosting World Voice Day for the UK; and is showcasing some of the most recent technologies that analyse the voice, synthesise voice and also manipulate the voice, for example in room acoustics, to show how the voice changes depending on the environment that it's in.  Colin Grant travels to the audio lab at the University for a demonstration of the virtual singing studio.

Songdo Smart City
Songdo is often heralded as the shining example of what the future smart city will look like.  But behind the hype just how smart and joined up is the technology that will propel this South Korean city into the future?  Gareth Mitchell talks to Cisco’s Wim Elfrink  about how Songdo is shaping up.

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