THE FILAMENT FACTORY
TEAM: Thijs van der Lely – Dutch – Technical University Delft Graduation Project
The Filament Factory – a.k.a. Building from waste
As we try to divest from fossil fuels, 4% of the global oil production is used to create new plastics. This while over 12% of the global solid waste is made up out of plastic.
Today plastic is barely recycled and ends up being dumped on landfills or worse. In addition the growing demand of 3D printers is actually accelerating plastic use.
The Filament Factory is a specified plastic recycling company that collects industrial and residential plastic, separates them and melts them into a new base material for fabrication: filament.
The factory itself is a celebration of the reintroduction of plastic waste as a building material. It is designed through algorithmic optimization of a catenary compression model, set to stand on old foundation found on repurposed building sites.
This catenary model is subdivided into 3D printed block pieces that click together with a special tension reducing joint. The building system is like a huge Lego structure that can be easily assemble and dissemble, shredded and reprinted if necessary. The filament factory not only reduces waste and reintroduces it as a new building material, its system can reduce global construction waste in general.