Last October, Leapfrog 3D printers started 3D printing China’s ‘Forbidden City’ in its entirety, in collaboration with Dutch museum De Nieuwe Kerk and the Chinese Nanjing Museum. The project was an ongoing one conducted as part of the Ming exhibition at De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, which is running from October 5th 2013 until next Sunday, 2 February 2014. To complete the project two printers have been working day and night to print all 980 buildings and Leapfrog has just announced its completion — including temples, halls, houses, gates, towers, bridges and walls — and, a frog. Presumably in recognition of the 3D printers!
During the almost four month construction process, Leapfrog points to some of the significant milestones. One of these was that some of the temples were ‘outsourced’, which in actuality eant that architectural firms could donate 1 or 2 hours of their time to 3D model the buildings. The last temple added to the project was the Hall of Supreme Harmony — the largest building in the Forbidden City and a true eye catcher. Subsequently, the temples were officially presented to national press and placed on the floor plan by a.o. Bettina Vriesekoop (former professional ping-pong player) and Ms. Cathelijne Broers (CEO of De Nieuwe Kerk).
The official completion took place yesterday (Asian time) or today (as I write this here in the UK) when the final 3D printed piece — “The Meridian Gate” — was added to the floor plan.
Leapfrog has uploaded the .stl files of the Forbidden City buildings to its forum, where anyone can download the if they fancy replicating the buildings on their own 3D printer. All buildings are dual colour prints, where extruder 1 will print the walls and extruder 2 will print the roof.
If you want to get more insight into this project and what it involved, Leapfrog have also uploaded an interview with Lucas Janssen, an engineer at Leapfrog 3D Printers, who modelled most of the buildings.
