The park is located next to the Shenzhen World Exhibition and Convention Center and is lined with sculptures, flowerpots, walls, and borders made with 3D printers based on multi-axis robotic arms such as JAKA cobots.
According to Xu Weiguo, professor of Tsinghua University’s School of Architecture who led the technical team, the landscaping of the park took two and a half months. All concrete objects were printed on additive systems of their own design using recycled materials.
According to Professor Xu, 3D printing with concrete is significantly cheaper than the production of traditional reinforced concrete structures, since computer simulation of additive processes helps optimize structures at the design stage and identify possible technical problems in advance.
Other projects by the professor and his team include gazebos that automatically open or close depending on weather conditions, affordable housing for the disadvantaged in Africa, and a concrete bridge in Shanghai constructed in 2019 (pictured below).
This 26-meter structure consists of 3D printed blocks on a steel arch and was considered for a while the longest 3D printed concrete bridge in the world.
In 2020, the record was broken by counterparts from the Hebei Polytechnic University with their 28-meter bridge, and in the last year, there appeared a new record holder (pictured above) — a 29-meter pedestrian and bicycle bridge in the Dutch city of Nijmegen, now under the authorship of the companies Royal BAM Group, Saint-Gobain Weber Beamix, and Eindhoven University of Technology.
