Molten London Meets The Landscape Printer

If you could partially melt the city of London – then refreeze it: what might that new city look like?
Alternatively, if you could build a huge machine, a landscape printer, and feed molten rivers of the city – a new Thames of liquid windows, old domes of churches running like paint – through its cavernous gates and printheads, what might you actually print with it?
Could you use the molten city of London as an "ink" for future cityscapes – store it in a vat, and print new continuous bridges, endless architecture, from Kent to northern Yorkshire? A diagonal ribbon of liquid London, solidifying across all of France.


[Image: Instead of colors, you'd have a cartridge full of Islington, full of Holborn, King's Cross, Little Venice...].

(For a related idea, see magmatic architecture).

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Blogger Geoff Manaugh said...

Of course, what I'd also like to know is: has the Papacy ever considered manufacturing a printer that contains small vials of holy water, so that when you print documents you get actual, Pope-blessed holy water sprayed into the micro-fabric of the paper? You could manufacture entire libraries' worth of literally holy texts.

Or a Papal laundromat franchise, where the water used to wash your clothing has been blessed by priests.

For that matter, a laundromat that uses liquid London. You wash your clothes in the molten remains of the once-capital British city.

Or you melt all of London down into a perfect sphere – which you then send floating through space... And it sprays holy water everywhere. A traveling spherical laundromat.

March 20, 2006 5:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The London printer's warranty is invalidated by using cartridges other than the official brand; oh! the damage that could be caused by a liquid Dagenham, Woking, Grays, etc.

March 20, 2006 6:49 PM  
Blogger Geoff Manaugh said...

Liquid Woking: a new non-energy drink...

March 20, 2006 8:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This guy invented a 'printer' for buildings -

http://www.contourcrafting.org/

Apparently there's someone with a similar idea in Hertfordshire, UK, but I haven't been able to find them out there on ye olde interwebs

March 21, 2006 5:48 AM  
Blogger Geoff Manaugh said...

Daniel - The guy behind ContourCrafting is Berokh Khoshnevis, who actually makes an appearance in one of the earliest BLDGBLOG posts: Lunar Urbanism. Check it out, I'm still quite fond of that one...

And thanks for the tip!

March 21, 2006 6:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I had a hunch you might know of Contour Crafting...

I came across some other 'printers' while I was working on a project some time ago, might be of interest -

www.motorestaurant.com
Chicago restaurant where the chef modified an old inkjet printer to print fruit and vegetable juice for the menus (which are fully edible)

www.nanotechweb.org/articles/news/5/1/9/1 +
www.mecheng.ucl.ac.uk/staff/?staff_id=sj
These guys have invented a device that can 'print' living cells, without damaging them. I met up with the one guy, Suwan, a couple of months ago and he reckons they will be able to print organs and tissue, no problem. When I asked him if you could potentially design and print an animal or whatever, he said that would be possible too...

My apologies for the long post if you've come across this stuff before

Thanks for a great blog!

March 22, 2006 5:56 AM  

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