AZ Technology and Innovation: Arcology

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A Phoenix man has come up with a different way to construct a building. We’ll show you how Brian Korsedal’s company “Arcology Now” is piecing together buildings from electrical conduit beams that are numbered and put together according to a design created on a computer.

Ted Simons: A quick trip to the hardware store and a 3-D printer are turning a Phoenix man into an architect of the future. In tonight's focus on Arizona technology and innovation, producer Shana Fischer and photographer Steve Snow introduce us to a man who hopes to change the way homes are built.

Brian Korsedal: Imagine this bar is an arrow. This is the head end of the bar --

Shana Fischer: Brian Korsedal leading a group of volunteers for a 21st century barn raising of sorts. Today they are making an arch that would sit atop a runway for a fashion show. His company, ARCOLOGY now, is able to take any design and make a large-scale structure out of it. The software Brian uses recognizes any shape. A 3-D printer will then spit out a desk top model. Brian works with a 3-D artist to create the designs.

Brian Korsedal: Put in whatever shape you want, software generates a structure to match the - and then our software generates all of the stickers that we put on electrical conduit, cut it, form it at my house, and pull together at parties.

Shana Fischer: Stickers have assembly instructions on them. After he places the stickers on the conduit, Brian punches holes in the ends of each piece to bolt them all together. He lays out all of the pieces in the front yard to assemble and it winds up looking like a giant set of tinker toys. All of the volunteers today are from the arts or tech community.

Alex Fitch: I've always been very much into, you know, connecter sets, Legos, erector sets, even comes down to putting IKEA furniture together. I like, you know, doing stuff that incorporates the use of getting my hands dirty and a little bit of ingenuity.

Shana Fischer: With the help of the volunteers, today's art project take about four hours to build. The hardest part for the volunteers is learning the assembly code but that only takes about minutes. ARCOLOGY now is in the startup stage but Brian has big plans for the future.

Brian Korsedal: Main goal to be doing basically artistic houses in a box where you put all of the parts of the house into a shipping container and ship it out to the location and you and all of your friends show up on the spot and assemble the house, it will have electrical, Plumbing, floors, windows, doors, everything there in the box.

Shana Fischer: Brian said he is pleased that the structure sparked conversations about sustainability and new ways to build. At the end of the day, he is in awe that his dream is coming true.

Brian Korsedal: It's a pretty amazing feeling. I did that. I'm the only one in the world that did that. It is a pretty interesting feeling, yeah.

Ted Simons: Korsedal says his structures could also be used as emergency shelters during hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters.

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