Determination of architectural construction technologies - detail design interaction with the expert opinion method in the context of 3D printing technologies

As construction technologies are taken into consideration in design processes, one of the factors determining the direction of the development of construction technologies is the actions within the detail design process. This mutual effect emerges as an architectural design-construction interaction. This study aimed at finding an answer to the question: “In the near future, when the newly developed 3D printing technology is used in a widespread manner as architectural construction technology, what effect will it have on the detail design process for architectural construction?”. For this purpose, the “Delphi-Expert opinion method”, which is a forecast method, was used in this study. With this method, questions were posed to selected academicians and architects, as experts who had different levels of experience, ranging from 2 to 50 years, in detail design, about the research question. As a remarkable result of using the Delphi method, regarding the use of 3D printing technology, they stated that joints and additional elements will almost disappear and the details will be “simplified” when compared to today. Finally, the results obtained using the Delphi method were applied to the details of the intersection area following the “research through design” and “prototyping” methods. With this study, the future use of 3D printing technology as a building technology was examined through the construction-design interaction and the possible effective development aspects of this technology were foreseen by experts. The applicability of the study results was demonstrated by transforming these predictions into new design sub-processes and applying them to a sample.