PLURIAL NOVILIA PRINTS IN 3D A PROTOTYPE WALL OF THE “VILIAPRINT” PROJECT

Plurial Novilia, Entreprise Sociale pour l’Habitat (ESH), a subsidiary of the Action Logement group, which manages more than 35,000 housing units in Champagne-Ardenne and Ile-de-France (Seine-et-Marne and Essonne), and all its partners*, today unveiled a prototype Viliaprint wall, printed in 3D concrete on April 4 at the XtreeE premises.

In June 2018, Plurial Novilia unveiled Viliaprint, an experimental construction project combining 3D concrete printing and prefabricated elements. Winner of the LabArchi call for projects “Architecture of Transformation 2018” from the Bank of the Territories and the Social Union for Housing, the project then entered into incubation for a period of 9 months, in order to test the solutions and validate the modalities of their generalization within the LabCDC, the incubator for innovative projects of the Caisse des Dépôts group. At the beginning of 2019, the project took a new step forward when the lessor unveiled, with the Coste Architectures Agency and all the partners, the technical and architectural outlines of the project.

Today, as the incubation is coming to an end, Viliaprint is taking shape, with the upcoming filing of the building permit and the 3D concrete printing of a new prototype. To achieve this result, important work was carried out on the concrete, supplied and specially developed by the Vicat cement group: it is a high-performance mortar that is directly transformed in the printing head of the XtreeE robot. As part of Viliaprint, the integration of 3D printing technology – or additive manufacturing – concrete – offers multiple interests, including :

• An architectural freedom (integration of curves, parabolas, ellipses…) offered by the use of digital design tools: no need for a mold, the latter being a digital model BIM (Building Information Modeling) very easily configurable.
• The reduction of material use through the optimization of clothing and structures, producing more hollows than solids. The objective for each element produced is to reduce the volume of concrete used by 40 to 70%.
• The reduction in construction times – provided here by Demathieu Bard Construction and Soprema – and, in the long term, costs.
• The reduction of hardship for the teams and nuisances for local residents.

As a first step, 5 rental houses will be built within Réma’Vert®, the first eco-neighbourhood in Champagne-Ardenne that Plurial Novilia has been developing and building since 2012. Work is expected to begin in February 2020 and be completed by the end of the year. Beyond the construction of these houses, the social landlord has set several objectives for this project:

• Elaborate an environmental and architectural project, with concrete functional contributions (added value for the occupant).
• Develop a new constructive operating mode and an economic model integrating the costs of technology transfer for the benefit of the local company and a table quantifying the construction cost (reusable).
• Establish a file of works certified by approved bodies (CSTB, control offices).

Create a technical file shared with social landlords wishing to develop similar operations.

* Technical partners: the start-up XtreeE, the Coste Architectures Agency, the Vicat cement group, the Fédération Française du Bâtiment (Grand-Est et Marne), Demathieu Bard Construction, Soprema, École des Ponts ParisTech, Socotec, the ETNR fluid design office, the Sixense Necs design office.