The Tech Lab of Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has completed a six-meter-tall 3D printed model of an air traffic control tower, produced for the practice’s ZHAviation exhibition stand at Passenger Terminal Expo 2026 in London. Built from an original ZHA tower design, the installation ranks among the most technically demanding fabrication efforts the Lab has undertaken.
The entire piece was designed and manufactured in-house on the Lab’s WASP HDP XL extruder, mounted on a robotic arm. Fifteen modular panels, each roughly one meter tall and wide, were printed in a continuous 270-hour run. To satisfy exhibition safety rules, the team printed in fire-resistant PETG, and every panel was fitted internally with programmable LED lighting that animates the interior surface and accentuates the tower’s sculptural form.
Demountable by Design, and a First for Multi-Robot Printing
Rather than a one-off prop, the tower was engineered for a life beyond a single trade show. The printed panels attach to a structural metal frame, allowing the piece to be assembled safely inside the exhibition hall, taken apart afterward, and redeployed at future events.
The project also marks a milestone for the Lab’s fabrication setup: it is the first major job to use its newly installed second robot, enabling simultaneous multi-robot production. Working closely with Italian large-format printer manufacturer WASP, the team extended the CEREBRO robotic control system and achieved, for the first time in this configuration, coordinated multi-robot printing. The capability widens the Lab’s scope for producing large-scale architectural components robotically in the future.
Machine Time Is the Bottleneck
The strategic point of the tower is not the geometry, it’s the throughput. One tower took 270 hours of continuous printing on a single extruder. That machine-time constraint is what caps large-format robotic printing, and it’s exactly what ZHA attacked: a second robot, so big jobs can run in parallel instead of in sequence.
The practice already knows where this capability leads. ZHA’s computation group delivered Striatus, the first unreinforced 3D printed concrete footbridge, whose 53 printed blocks took 84 hours on a single robotic arm. At building scale, print hours add up quickly enough that without parallel production, deadlines become impossible to meet.
The industry is converging on the same answer: coordination software, not bigger extruders. Ai Build integrating WASP’s robotic-arm printing into its AI-powered platform, automating toolpaths and orchestrating machines to squeeze more output from the same hardware.
Large-format printing now scales through coordination, and ZHA has demonstrated it can do that in-house. The next 270-hour job could be significantly shorter.
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Featured image shows Six-Meter Tower for Passenger Terminal Expo. Photo via Zaha Hadid Architects.
Facts Only
* Zaha Hadid Architects’ Tech Lab produced a six-meter-tall 3D printed model of an air traffic control tower.
* The model was created for the ZHAviation exhibition stand at Passenger Terminal Expo 2026 in London.
* The piece was built from an original ZHA tower design.
* Manufacturing occurred in-house using the WASP HDP XL extruder mounted on a robotic arm.
* Fifteen modular panels, each roughly one meter tall and wide, were printed in a continuous 270-hour run.
* The panels were printed in fire-resistant PETG to meet exhibition safety rules.
* Each panel included programmable LED lighting for interior animation.
* The tower design allows the panels to detach from a structural metal frame for demountability.
* The project used the Lab’s second robot, enabling multi-robot printing coordinated via the CEREBRO system with WASP.
* One tower required 270 hours of continuous printing on a single extruder.
* A previous job involved 53 printed blocks taking 84 hours on a single robotic arm.
Executive Summary
The Tech Lab of Zaha Hadid Architects created a six-meter-tall 3D printed model of an air traffic control tower for the ZHAviation exhibition stand at Passenger Terminal Expo 2026 in London, based on an original ZHA design. The installation utilized the Lab’s WASP HDP XL extruder and a robotic arm for in-house manufacturing. Fifteen modular panels, approximately one meter tall and wide each, were printed in a continuous 270-hour run using fire-resistant PETG. Each panel incorporated programmable LED lighting to highlight the tower's form.
The design features a "Demountable by Design" approach, where the panels attach to a metal frame, allowing for safe assembly, disassembly, and redeployment at future events. This project marked the first use of the Lab’s second robot, enabling simultaneous multi-robot production by coordinating the CEREBRO robotic control system with WASP hardware.
The central constraint identified in the process was machine time; one tower required 270 hours on a single extruder. This limitation is being addressed by integrating coordination software into AI platforms to enable parallel printing, aiming to reduce large-format job times.
Full Take
The narrative pivots from demonstrating complex, high-fidelity fabrication to framing a systemic bottleneck in additive manufacturing throughput, suggesting that geometric complexity is less limiting than production sequencing. The shift from a singular constraint (machine time) to a solution (coordination software integrated with AI platforms) reveals a pattern of industrial maturation where physical limits are overcome by computational orchestration rather than purely material or mechanical advancement. This mirrors the trajectory seen in other large-scale construction where coordination algorithms become as critical as material science.
The deployment of multi-robot printing, while framed as an internal achievement, directly addresses the scalability challenge inherent in large-format production. The comparison with the concrete footbridge project further establishes a precedent: when scaling physical output (building blocks), sequential processing becomes infeasible without parallelization. This suggests that future innovation in additive manufacturing will be defined less by increasing machine capability and more by developing robust orchestration layers capable of managing complex, distributed workflows across diverse hardware.
The underlying implication is that the true frontier for industrial application lies not in pushing the physical limits of a single printer, but in achieving systemic interoperability. The focus on coordination software suggests an emerging paradigm where the value accrues to the ability to orchestrate heterogeneous systems rather than maximizing the output of any single component. What are the unstated costs associated with this transition, and how might organizational structures shift when fabrication capabilities become defined by algorithmic control?
Sentinel — Human
This content reads like expertly framed industry reporting that synthesizes specific project details into broader implications about the scalability of additive manufacturing, suggesting a human editorial hand.