Anti-Ruin, 3D printed structure made from marble dust, reimagines ruin

The 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture, which opened in May and runs until November, is providing a unique platform for 3D printing, with many artists and installations leveraging the technology to explore ideas related to the relationship between nature, technology and architecture. From another perspective, 3D printing is enabling these innovative designers and architects to investigate these ideas in a tangible, physical way. Such is the case with Anti-Ruin, a 3D printed installation on show at the Turkish Pavilion, that imagines a future where architecture evolves rather than succumbs to ruin and decay.

Anti-Ruin is created by OZRUH, an architecture design studio based out of London, with participation from ETH Zurich. The installation consists of a three-meter-tall structure made from marble dust, a byproduct from marble quarries, which was processed using a binder jetting technology developed by ETH Zurich’s Dr. Pietro Odaglia. The marble dust used in the project, derived from the Lasa Marmo Quarry in South Tyrol, Italy, was reconstituted into a building material using a liquid binder, which was selectively applied layer by layer to create a series of modules. These printed modules were then assembled into the three-meter gate-like form that is now on display.

In addition to the impressive architectural structure, Anti-Ruin also consists of a documentary, screened within the biennale’s main exhibition Intelligens CANON. This documentary covers the creation of the 3D printed structure, with scenes at the quarry showing the origin of the building material and also ETH Zurich’s labs, where the dust was transformed into what we see today.

On a theoretical level, the project is interested in a vision of architecture that is based on regeneration. This plays out in a couple of ways. For one, it presents a new use for marble dust waste, a byproduct created in the extraction of another architectural material. In fact, the project could be adapted for other building byproducts, like crushed brick or demolition waste. For another, the 3D printed components are designed to be modular, meaning that the original architectural structure can be changed and reassembled depending on changing needs.

The structure that visitors of the Venice Biennale of Architecture will see upon visiting the Turkish Pavilion was engineered by formDP, a design-led structural engineering office, which created an unconventional gate-like arch with a free-standing column and an off-center design. “At its core, Anti-Ruin departs from architecture’s conventional fixation on completeness, where structures are either complete or incomplete. Within this binary logic, unfinished constructions and ruins lack incremental functionality,” OZRUH says. “In contrast, Anti-Ruin merges top-down intention with bottom-up growth, ensuring that each phase remains meaningful, functional, and always complete.”