Dive Brief:

• Italian company WASP, creator of the world’s largest delta-style 3-D printer, Big Delta, has announced plans to 3-D print an entire village in Italy, according to 3DPrint.com. Big Delta will 3-D print all of the village’s buildings and furnishings.
• WASP said the village, dubbed Shambhala, will be built in the industrial area of Italian town Massa Lombarda. The village will be self-sufficient, high tech, eco-friendly and use minimal energy.
• The idea of Shambhala is a continuation of WASP’s stated goal for Big Delta, which is for the massive printer to be able to use local, eco-friendly soils to create well-built housing quickly and efficiently in any area, particularly in disaster areas or the developing world.

Dive Insight:

Project leaders said Shambhala is "a realization" of the maker movement, "where everything is self-made and nobody depends on monopolistic companies."

WASP said the Shambhala concept works in any economy, wealthy or poor, as long as the community’s goal is to eschew "monopolies, mass production and corporate corruption." WASP said the village will feature vertical vegetable gardens and a laboratory where a desktop printer will make furniture, biomedical products, jewelry and ceramics.

Shambhala is just the latest step in the growing 3-D printing industry, which has seen innovation all over the world. Soon after the appearance of Big Delta, the smaller and more portable Apis Cor arrived on the scene with the capabilities to develop and build housing quickly and in the most remote areas. Apis Cor developers, like WASP,  said its 3-D printing capabilities could help provide emergency shelter after a natural disaster.

In addition, a research team at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands has also gotten in on the 3-D printing action with a new concrete printer that can produce concrete prints as large as 36 feet long, 16 feet wide and 13 feet high.