Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello

Casa Covida, a house for co-habitation in the time of covid, is an experiment in combining 3D printing with indigenous and traditional building materials, methods with employing new and ancient ways of living. The experimental case-study house is sited in the high alpine desert of Colorado’s San Luis Valley, where adobe, a combination of sand, silt, clay, water and straw that is dried in the sun, and is the traditional building material of the region. The house is comprised of three spaces, each for two people to sleep, bathe, and gather around fire and food, and the spaces have openings to the sky, the horizon, and the ground. The central space contains a hearth surrounded by two tarima, or earthen benches, covered with woven textiles. 3D printed cookware crafted using regional micaceous clay reminiscent of traditional New Mexico Pueblo pottery, can withstand the heat shock of the hearth, to cook locally grown beans, corn, and chiles.

The 3D printing system combines a portable 3-axis SCARA (Selective Compliance Articulated Robot Arm) purpose built for on-site additive manufacturing that can construct structures larger than the printer itself, with a continuous flow, and stator driven mortar pump that delivers adobe material to the nozzle. The design files are created by a robust software application that grows from Potterware, a ceramic 3D printing software developed by Emerging Objects, which was a by-product of the architectural aspirations for printing with clay.