The Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona, Spain, has been under construction for more than 130 years, but now thanks to the 21st century technology of 3D printing, the 19th century project may finally be completed by 2026. This is perhaps one of the longest active construction projects on the planet. Construction work began in 1882, but only a quarter of the church was completed at the time of his death in 1926. Although there is still much work left to be done to complete Gaudi's vision, the church is already structurally sound, open to the public, and completely stunning, reported BBC. In part because of its long lifespan, this project has captivated architects and designers since its inception. What delights folks now is the amazing progress that 3D printing has enabled the present-day architecture team to stay as true as possible to the intent of the design's original creator. Project leaders began using 3D printing in 2001, but the technology has advanced so much in recent years that it is now more useful and accurate than ever. Chief architect Jordi Coll believes that Gaudi himself would have been a great proponent of 3D-printed architecture. "Due to the complexity of surfaces and forms, working with Gaudi's designs in 2D does not make sense from an architectural point of view," he said, as quoted by 3D Systems. "If Gaudi was alive today, he would have brought 3D technology to its maximum exponent, since much of his work was already conceived tri-dimensionally." Due to the scale of the project, Sagrada Familia has its own technical studio which acquired two 3D printers to help with the construction. The printers are being used, in large part, to reconstruct 3D models of the building, following Gaudi's designs. The original plaster models created from Gaudi's 2D drawings were almost completely destroyed by vandals during the Spanish Civil War, along with most of his writings and photographs. Architects are working hard to use modern technology to piece back together Gaudi's design, and the progress they've made on the building has most visitors feeling like they must be doing a good job.

A whopping Italian estate with a 12th-century medieval castle and a sprinkling of Tuscan farmhouses in the ground, is on market for US$ 29,3 million. According to The Telegraph, 14,3 thousand square meters mansion has 115 bedrooms, 100 bathrooms on the side. This castle just east of Siena, wrapped in 630 hectares planted with 1,500 olive trees producing award-winning olive oil, is thought to be the largest property in the world currently on the market. The setting in Tuscany, the medieval courtyard with tower and chapel, the Italianate gardens with palms and box hedges, the interiors with marble floors and elaborate painted ceilings, make it so romantic that it is sometimes hired for weddings. It goes without saying that there is plenty of room for guests to sleep, as well as pools for them to swim in. "It is exceptionally beautiful. There are many castles in Tuscany but very few are medieval," says the agent John Jonk of Sotheby's International "The approach to it is wonderful and you go into another world. There are thousands of wild boar and roe deer, magical woods, vineyards, olive groves and grain fields. On the estate it is always silent. The castle was built at a time just before Giotto, when the Renaissance lay around the corner and Siena was at war with Florence." From the 1400s it had been in the hands of the Piccolomini family until the current owners bought it more than 30 years ago. "The price is unusually low considering it provides 14,3 thousand square meters of accommodation. But this reflects the market in Europe at the moment." It is believed that Galileo Galilei stayed in the tower and must have gazed out upon the same night sky. How does it compare to other global Godzillas of the property world? One of the largest newly built palaces is the 27-storey skyscraper Antilia in Mumbai, India, which provides 37,1 thousand square meters of space, including six stories of parking lots, a lobby with nine elevators and several lounges, a ballroom with crystal chandeliers, swimming pool, bar, yoga studio, ice room, four-storey garden and private sleeping areas for a family of five. It is thought to have cost nearly US$ 2 billion to build and is the home of Mukesh Ambani, head of the India-based petrochemical Reliance Industries. According to therichest.com, the largest home is the Istana Nurul Iman Palace, at 200 thousand square meters. This is the official residence of the Sultan of Brunei and has 1,788 rooms, 257 bathrooms, five swimming pools, a 110-car garage, air-conditioned stable for 200 polo ponies, banquet hall, and a mosque large enough for 1,500 worshippers. Its estimated cost was US$ 2,08 billion.

A day after his death, German architect Frei Otto was named the 2015 winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the field's highest honor. The award typically goes to a living architect. Otto died on 9 March at age 89, so the announcement of the prize, scheduled for March 23, was hastily moved up. The executive director of the prize, Martha Thorne, a former architecture curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, told Otto of the award before he died. Mr. Otto's work grew out of a time of scarcity after World War II, when a shortage of construction materials encouraged him to innovate. One inspiration, he said, was the soap bubble, which showed him how to create the maximum enclosure with the minimum material. Without Frei Otto, many of the structures and buildings of the past 50 years wouldn't exist. Because Otto wasn't just an architect-he was also a brilliant inventor and engineer who pioneered some of the most far-fetched feats of structural engineering ever completed. "Throughout his life," said the citation from the nine-member Pritzker jury, "Frei Otto has produced imaginative, fresh, unprecedented spaces and constructions." Otto's major buildings include the German pavilion at the 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal, roof for Olympic Stadium, Munich in 1972, Tuwaiq Palace, Saudi Arabia, with Buro Happold in 1985 and the Japan Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany. The award comes with US$ 100,000 and a bronze medallion. It will be presented, presumably to representatives of the architect, on May 15 in Miami Beach. Founded in 1979 by Jay A. Pritzker and his wife Cindy, the award is funded by the Pritzker family and is considered to be one of the world's premier architecture prizes; it is often referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture. The Pritzker Prize won such architectures, as Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, Oscar Niemeyer, Wang Shu, Toyo Ito . Otto is the second German architect to win the award. The first was Gottfried Boehm, the 1986 winner.

At first 15 floors in 6 days, then 30 floors in 15 days, now 57 floors in 19 days... Chinese company "Broad Sustainable Building" again hits a record. BSB Architect Xian Min Zhang has released a time-lapse video of the construction of the company's latest building: a 57-floor, 80 thousand square meters skyscraper, fully built with energy-efficient, factory-produced, Lego-like blocks. He claims BSB is now building its prefabricated skyscrapers at a record three floors per day. The new prefabricated tower, which named "J57", has 19 atriums of 10 meters' height each, 800 apartments and office space for 4,000 people. The use of company's modular construction technique, which won a CTBUH Innovation Award in 2013, reduced the use of concrete by 15,000 trucks, which has nearly eliminated all the dust that would normally be released during conventional construction, an important advantage in pollution-ridden China. Besides this, the air inside the building is 99.9 percent pure, thanks to the tight construction and built-in air conditioning system. The J57 building has quadruple-pane glass and is so energy efficient that it will save more than 10,000 metric tons of CO2 emission compared to a conventionally constructed building of the same size and use. The first attempt to build such buildings company made in 2010, when built its first prefabricated tower. The 15-story Ark Hotel was built in record 6 days . After two years, company built 30-story prefabricated hotel just in 15 days. Then in 2013 the founder of parent company Broad Group Chairman Zhang Yue announced about its ambitious project. The company planned to build world's tallest tower - 838 meter high "Sky City". According to the company, construction of this tower began on June 20, 2013 and would be completed by April 2014. But the project has been halted, apparently for political reasons. This Mini Sky city, while proving that Zhang's techniques work-and quite impressively so-was itself halted at 20 stories and then cut in height from 97 stories to 57; the company states that this was due to its location near an airport.

Many designers use different devices for house passive cooling. But what if we try to approach the issue from another side and for cooling system use the material from which the house is built. For example, it can be a simple brick. Company "Emerging Objects" has developed a 3D-printed ceramic brick that uses nothing but water to cool homes in hot, dry climates. Every centimeter of this brick is printed by 3D printer, and the invention is called quite simply - Cool Bricks. Evaporative cooling is the addition of water vapor into air, which causes a lowering of the temperature of the air. Before the advent of refrigeration, evaporative cooling was used for millennia. Porous ceramic vessels were used to cool water by evaporation through their walls. Frescoes from about 2500 BC show slaves fanning jars of water to cool rooms. Inspired by the Muscatese Evaporative cooling window, which combines a wood screen, or mashrabiya, and a ceramic vessel filled with water, the "cool brick" masonry system is used to build walls that passively cool interiors in desert environments. Comprised of 3D printed porous ceramic bricks set in mortar, each brick absorbs water like a sponge and is designed as a three dimensional lattice that allows air to pass through the wall. As air moves through the 3D printed brick, the water that is held in the micro-pores of the ceramic evaporates, bringing cool air into an interior environment, lowering the temperature using the principle of evaporative cooling. The bricks are modular and interlocking, and can be stacked together to make a screen. The 3D lattice creates a strong bond when set in mortar. The shape of the brick also creates a shaded surface on the wall to keep a large percentage of the wall's surface cool and protected from the sun to improve the wall's performance. "This is a modern alternative to air conditioners or other devices that can cool the air inside the house. Our technology is more natural and allows you to save a lot of energy, especially in extremely arid regions, "- said one of the brick's designers, Ronald Rael. Currently the testing of innovation brick has just begun and its abilities are checked in practice. But researchers believe that the bricks can be used for cooling large rooms and also can be useful in agriculture.