QR3D

Concrete Poetry: Singapore’s First 3D-Printed Multi-Storey House

At Park + Associates, our work has always been guided by a belief that architecture must remain deeply human, even as it embraces new technologies. QR3D is an exploration of this conviction — a project that asks how digital fabrication can extend, rather than replace, the emotional and spatial intelligence of architecture.

Conceived as both a family home and a research platform, QR3D is Singapore’s first full-scale multi-storey residence constructed using 3D-printed concrete. Developed in collaboration with CES_InnovFab, the project was initiated not as an experiment in novelty, but as an inquiry into how emerging modes of making can respond to the realities of construction while preserving the craft, memory and atmosphere that give architecture its meaning.

More than ninety per cent of the building fabric was produced through onsite and offsite 3D printing using a custom concrete mix refined through extensive research and prototyping. Rather than concealing the process, we chose to reveal it. The layered striations of printed concrete are left exposed, allowing the act of making to become part of the architectural language — a quiet record of time, material and method.

At the heart of the house is a sculptural oculus suspended above the dining space. This void is both spatial and symbolic. Environmentally, it acts as a passive cooling device, drawing warm air upward while admitting daylight deep into the interior. Emotionally, it serves as a memory — a reinterpretation of the formal central space of the previous house that once occupied the site, translated into a contemporary vocabulary. Light passing through the oculus becomes a daily measure of time, animating the house through shifting shadow and reflection.

Throughout the project, we resisted the notion that digitally driven architecture must privilege efficiency over intimacy. QR3D seeks instead a synthesis: where technological precision coexists with spatial generosity, and where innovation remains in service of inhabitation. The reduction of labour, waste and construction disturbance offered by 3D printing allowed us to pursue complex geometries and continuous surfaces with clarity and restraint.

Ultimately, QR3D is less a demonstration of technology than a reflection on continuity — between past and future, craft and computation, memory and invention. It is an attempt to imagine a future of construction that remains grounded in the enduring values of comfort, relevance and quiet dignity.