With the help of 3D printing, Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Família may finally get some closure. According to the BBC, the Church Technical Office tasked with completing the Barcelonan project switched from handcrafted prototypes to 3D-printed plaster models about 14 years ago. This allows them to create models in 12 hours and manipulate different modular parts post-printing. "The cathedral now has a completion date of 2026," they report, thanks to two on-site 3D model printers.
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"Due to the complexity of surfaces and forms, working with Gaudí's designs in 2D does not make sense from an architectural point of view," chief architect Jodi Coll tells 3DSystems. "If Gaudí was alive today, he would have brought 3D technology to its maximum exponent, since much of his work was already conceived tri-dimensionally." Below, see the BBC report and check out the animated rendering of how the Sagrada Família will evolve in the next 12 years:
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