There’s Still Time to Enter Branch Technology’s Freeform Home Design Challenge

We first covered Chatanooga-based 3D design and printing innovator Branch Technology here last July, when the company successfully built 3D printed walls using the world’s largest freeform 3D printer. This was a first for international 3D design and printing. Since then, we have covered several other company activities including its successful 3D printing of the tallest 3D printed object in America and its installation of a “Backdrop for Innovation” that was featured at Chatanooga’s Enterprise Center. All of these projects were completed using the company’s patented technology, and now the company is asking designers to use this technology to design a single-family house for its Freeform Home Design Challenge.

We first heard about this Challenge last July, and now, almost seven months later, the Design Challenge registration date (March 4) and submission date (March 15) are fast approaching. So here we are, reviewing the Competition guidelines so that all able participants can be a part of an excellent opportunity to display their unique 3D design talents for all to see. And the top winner will see their design actually constructed, too!

The upshot of this Design Challenge is that Branch Technology wants architects, designers, engineers, and artists to use its patented technology to create a single-family house. On the Design Challenge webpage, Branch Technology summarizes its original method for 3D printing architectural components, known as Cellular Fabrication:

“This method combines large-scale robotics, sophisticated algorithms and carbon composite materials to print open-cell structures. This patented technology is called Cellular Fabrication™. C-Fab™ is unique in that it is flexible in functionality, formally dynamic, fully customizable, and environmentally efficient compared to other methods of construction.”

The challenge is to design a one-level house between 600 and 800 square feet. Design proposals need to utilize C-Fab for “the exterior building envelope, local site conditions, interior living functionality and building systems.” (You can get a full competition brief from the website here.)

Submission requirements include: one uploaded digital submission; two 24″ x 36″ design boards with project drawings, renderings, and details; and one digital model for display on the online viewing platform.

If you successfully submit all required elements by March 15, 2016 (11:59 EMT), you have a chance of being one of 50 short-listed finalists that will move on to Phase 2 of the Challenge. In this phase, your design boards and models will be featured on the online viewing platform, where a jury will select First Prize and Visionary Award winners. The People’s Choice Award will be selected based on how many votes an entry on the viewing platform receives.

Finalists will be announced March 28th and the public voting will close on April 20th. Winners will be announced April 22nd with home construction beginning in July 2016. That’s right: the 1st Prize winning design will be built, and the winner will also receive an $8,000 cash prize. The Visionary Award and People’s Choice winners will each receive $1,000 cash.

If you are interested in trying your hand at 3D designing a home using Branch Technology’s C-Fab™ method, with the major perk that you may get to see your winning design constructed, check out all of the Challenge details here while there’s still time to register and submit your ideas for a single-family, one level 3D printed home of the (not too distant) future. Are you planning on entering? Discuss in the Branch Technology 3D Home Design Challenge forum over at 3DPB.com.