A 3D-printed data facility will be built in Heidelberg, Germany. Heidelberg iT Management, a cloud and data center operator, said this month that it would employ the "largest 3D-printed building in Europe" as a server hotel by the end of 2023. The project is led by Kraus Group, Peri 3D Construction, Heidelberg Materials, SSV Architekten Heidelberg, as well as Mense-Korte ingenieure+architekten. Baufeld 5 at Billie-Holiday-Straße 7 in Baden-Württemberg will be a little under 6,600 sq ft. The BOD2 3D construction printer started building in late March and will finish in July, followed by the data center internal fit-out.
Scaffolding company Peri Group owns Peri 3D. General Electric, CEMEX, Holcim, and Peri own Cobod, which makes the BOD2 construction printers. The printing process is projected to take 140 hours, printing 4 square meters of construction per hour. Heidelberg Materials will 3D print the facility with 450 tons of printing concrete. The concrete is 100% recyclable and has a binder that reduces CO2 by 55% compared to Portland cement. DAW Deutsche Amphibolin-Werke by Robert Murjahn, famed for Caparol and Alpina Weiß, will paint the interior using a robot. Heidelberg, iT was formally founded in 2007 after integrating with MEG Kommunikationssysteme GmbH; however, its first data center was launched in 2001 with MVV Manet GmbH. A second facility opened in 2016. The Heidelberg location will be the company's fourth commercial data center.
