What if one element of your business was dedicated to nothing else but becoming a launchpad for the innovation of others? That was the intent of the Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy (AMIE) project, led by architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and its partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and a host of other industry leaders. AMIE is an integrated energy system that shares energy between a 3D-printed, natural gas–powered vehicle and a 3D-printed home and was honored as a HIVE Top 5 Innovator last year.

The highly collaborative project focused on capturing energy that otherwise was being unused. Here, Brian Lee, principal at SOM, explains the evolution of the project.

Roderick Jackson, currently laboratory program manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, was working with SOM on the project at ORNL and constantly asked the team to think differently, focusing on what they could do together that they couldn’t do alone.

“Only 10% of investment in innovation is really disruptive,” Jackson says on the stage at the HIVE conference in December. “You have to look at the same problem but ask different questions.”

The partnership allowed the group the freedom to ask new questions because they had trust and rapport. Those questions pushed the group to create the first version of AMIE. As the group considers subsequent versions of AMIE, it takes a humble approach.

“If AMIE is the solution then we didn’t do our job,” Jackson continues. “We wanted to put AMIE out there for others to see, and really innovate on top of that.”

So, where is AMIE headed?

“We are looking at scale,” Jackson says. “How to optimize from a city perspective. If we don’t consider how the building can be built and we aren’t collaborating beyond who builds the building, then we’re in trouble. It’s a more holistic approach, partnering with the vehicle industry.”

Because buildings consume 75% of electricity on the grid today, Lee explains there is real reason to take an integrated approach and to see how to use the future, more expansive electrification of the transportation fleet. So the project will continue to explore symbiotic relationships for integrated solutions and new ways to use energy.

As a major component of the first AMIE project, there is still thinking around how 3D printing will evolve. Lee says that maybe it’s just using 3D printing to print the molds, but he also wants to explore doing things with different materials to develop something that is more deployable in terms of building.

Ultimately, Lee sees this as a potential path to a new type of urbanism. He aspires to translate the project into terms of sustainable, high-volume manufacturing for high performance enclosures.

This story appears as it was originally published on our sister site, www.hiveforhousing.com.