This beautiful glowing structure is not as scary as it might look – located in the middle of a redwood forest, it is illuminated from within and seems to be from another world. It is a structure that is made from, of all things, a 3-D printer. If you have not heard of them yet, 3-D printers can create 3-dimensional objects by layering print after print on top of each other and so you can make an object that you can hold and look at from a variety of directions. And in this case you can walk into something that was printed off of a printer. This is titled Echoviren and it was made and built on site in northern California.
Echoviren is made of over 500 parts of plastic and it will decompose into the forest, as the plastic is a special material that will not cause the same environmental problems as most plastic we use in our typical water bottles and sandwich bags. This is called PLA bio-plastic and it comes from plants.
Until it decomposes, Echoviren will be a space used by people (and maybe animals too) to think about the world and beauty and whatever is in your mind. It has a sort of natural shape and it also is a very technical side, because don’t forget, it is printed.
The designers and builders of this structure are Bryan Allen and Stephanie Smith and their company is called Smith|Allen.
Wouldn’t it be great to get your hands on a 3D printer and try to make your own structure? More info here.