In the Press

Home and Car, Learning to Share

The US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has unveiled a futuristic prototype that unites home and vehicle, and we don’t mean they’ve designed a nuclear RV. Rather, they’ve created a small shelter and a vehicle — one elegantly modern, the other comically utilitarian — that are built in the same factory and share a common power grid. At the core of the project is the world’s largest 3D printer, and the technical term for that printing process gives the project the name AMIE, which stands for Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy. …

Eighty percent of the house is composed of the same ABS composite as the car, and it took about four weeks to print the 210-square-foot structure. The roof has a slight arch, a beautiful detail provided by the architectural team from Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who add AMIE to a portfolio that includes the world’s tallest building, among many, many others.