Sagrada Familia is the largest Roman Catholic church in Barcelona, Spain designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. The building is the longest active construction projects on the planet. Construction work began in 1882 and it is still under construction. Although the construction is incomplete, the church is UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Thanks to the modern 3D printing technology, the construction is getting little closer to completion. 3D printing technology is deployed in the year 2001 but in the recent years the technology advanced so much that it being put to use aggressively for completion of the project. Chief architect Jordi Coll believes that Gaudi himself would have been a great proponent of 3D printed architecture. “Due to complexity of surfaces and forms, working with Gaudi’s designs in 2D doesn’t 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”.

Sagrada Familia has its own technical studio equipped with 3D printers to help with the construction. The printers are being used to reconstruct 3D models of the building, following Gaudi’s designs. The original plaster model 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 putting in lot of hard work to use modern technology to piece back together Gaudi’s design and the progress they have made on the building has been exceptional. Let us hope the construction soon comes to an end and we get to see the completed Sagrada Familia.