Innovative Gelateria Created With ETH Zurich’s 3D Printing
08 January 2026: ETH Zurich students 3D printed an experimental, recycled plastic interior for the “Gelateria” in the Swiss Alpine village of Mulegns, combining it with a reclaimed timber barn-like exterior to create a sustainable, digitally fabricated structure that serves as both an ice cream shop and a prototype for circular architecture, showcasing computational design and material reuse. The project features a swirling, colorful cupola of 3D-printed PETG, demonstrating material efficiency and aesthetic possibilities in sustainable building.
The gelateria is an experimental ice cream shop and a radical architectural fusion – merging the typology of a traditional Alpine barn with the expressive form language of a Baroque cupola. Cloaked in a translucent skin, the project juxtaposes a faceted timber shell made from reclaimed wood with a vibrant, robotically 3D-printed interior fabricated from recycled plastic. The structure harnesses an innovative large-scale plastic extrusion technique that enables ultra-lightweight construction and introduces color and light as additional design parameters, blending rapid robotic production with architectural ornament.
The 3D-printed interior structure was designed and built by students of the Master of Advanced Studies in Architecture and Digital Fabrication, demonstrating how digital processes can drive both design expression and ecological responsibility.
Externally, the building adopts the familiar silhouette of a barn, which once stood there, constructed from locally sourced reclaimed mass timber, cut and prefabricated by timber experts at a nearby facility. The lightweight yet robust timber structure unfolds in a faceted, origami-like geometry and is wrapped in a semi-transparent membrane. This protective skin allows light to permeate while revealing the vivid forms of the 3D-printed interior.
At the heart of the building lies a colorful 3D-printed cupola, fabricated at ETH Zurich’s Robotic Fabrication Lab using Hollow-Core. The experimental robotic extrusion process was developed for façade elements within the National Centre of Competence in Research “Digital Fabrication” at the Chair of Digital Building Technologies. Students adapted this method to produce the large-scale interior form, reducing geometric resolution to boost print speed and working directly with the expressive potential of recycled PETG – a thermoplastic commonly used in food packaging. Despite spanning over 250 square meters, the lightweight structure weighs less than a ton.
