Japanese Architecture Inspired 3D Printed Art

For my upcycling project, I wanted to create an art piece using FDM 3D printing. I have my own printer and wanted to use it more to create interesting art pieces, and this project is a great excuse to do more of this. My concept for this project was to design, print, and paint a structure that is an original design but based on classic Japanese architecture like a pagoda. I want to create my design in Solidworks given my familiarity with it, so the details and design will remain relatively simple, but I expected to still be able to create something to be proud of. The following picture taken by AXP Photography (1) demonstrates many of the features I was aiming to include in my piece.

It has recognizable roof styling, with upward curves at the corners, with rounded features perpendicular to the edge of the roof distributed horizontally. Also noticeable here is the generous usage of red, which is common in much of this traditional architecture. For my piece, I planned on incorporating black, white, and red into the color scheme. My piece ended up including more red than I initially envisioned, given how prevalent it is in my inspirations. Another similar structure can be seen below, with a multi-storied pagoda styled tower. This photo was taken by Evan Pike in 2015 (2), a pagoda with Nachi Falls in the background. With my project, I plan to incorporate multiple stories into my building like this.

Japanese architecture often makes use of large open doorways, along with adjacent structures like Torii gates, structures which mark a boundary between a sacred space and an ordinary space. A photo of one used in the Encyclopedia Britannica (3) is shown below, where one would pass through as they ascended to the sacred space beyond it.

I planned to create a piece that combines many of these elements, while also being unique with my design, colors, and subtleties. I’m sure I won’t be able to capture everything that makes these types of Japanese structures so beautiful, but I hope it is nonetheless. The featured image (4), is actually from Marco Garcia of a temple in Hawaii, the Byodo-In Temple, yet captures the beauty of Japanese architecture extremely well. 

The following sketch indicated my initial design idea and outlined the general design and aesthetic I’d hoped to achieve. It was tricky to determine what exactly I wanted to make, as I struggled deciding how accurate and representative of actual Japanese architecture it was, while also being unique to me and this individual work. Ultimately, I think I’ve decided to limit the liberties that I take, and created something more structured and authentic. My sketch below illustrates the concept I am aiming to design with CAD and then 3D print and paint.

My main point of reference is the first image from AXP Photography [1]. I will be roughly recreating many of the elements featured there, such as the entrance split into three ways, the walkable second story, and the roofing style. These elements are found in tons of various structures across Japan, therefore I thought it prudent to keep them in my piece. I took some liberties, however, such as adding my own small design flourishes on the walls, and creating my own structure to be on the top, which is kind of an aggressive Torii gate. The following CAD model shows the progress I made after my first session.

As you can see, I am only focusing on creating the front of a hypothetical building, instead of the whole thing. This allows me to do half the work while still maintaining all the design elements that I want, and when displayed I would only see the front anyway. The foundation is there, but details needed to be added, such as a door on the second floor, accents on the walls, and the Torii gate structure on the roof. After many more CAD sessions, I was able to finish with the following model, ready to be printed in three chunks.

I have brick details on the ground, some extruded accents made up of lines and curves on the walls to add flair, a custom Torii gate on the roof of the building, which is not something that actually exists in real architecture, and I even put “芸術”, which translates to “Geijutsu” and means art, although there are other ways to say this. It’s a little on the nose for the project but I thought the kanji would look cool and add to the aesthetic of the project. 

I printed this in three parts as mentioned above to save on support usage, corresponding to the base with the first walls, followed by the section from the first roof up to the second roof, and then the second roof with the Torii gate on top. Below are all three images of this, and they are already painted. 

I actually printed out a small slab with the kanji on it so I could print it at an opposite orientation compared to the rest of the part. 

The four solid red panels represent the doors that allow someone to go out onto the deck.

Overall, I decided to use the color “Vermillion” as a nice bright red with a hint of orange to cover the accents. The roofing color is a black-gray variant called “Payne’s Gray” with a hint of an olive green in there, but it wasn’t too visible in the final product. I painted the kanji a nice gold to give them a rich pop. Overall, my paint job is far from perfect, as the brush I was using was only so small, so many of the tiny details have imperfections and smudges. I would like to take a white paint to cover any of those, while also straightening out the red lines. But then I sanded the contact points between the layers and used a strong cyanoacrylate glue to connect them. Below you can see the final product.

In terms of how it came out versus what I envisioned at the start, they are honestly quite close, barring some minor paint blemishes. It is quite a simple design, and given more time I would have liked to build out some more unique or complex parts or even making a larger design. I initially printed an even smaller first layer before deciding it wasn’t as large as I would like, so I increased the size by 30%. I think it could have done with being even larger, especially in the vertical direction. I never noticed it when doing the CAD but the building looks quite compressed, especially from a downward angle like this one. Adding more stories to it could solve this and make it look more regal and impressive. I also am reflecting on the contrast between the white print material and the red paint I chose, as I think those two colors together make it look quite “plastic-y”, and so I’m considering making the white walls more beige or altering the red accent color. 

This project has no functionality component, as it is just a static recreation of a static structure. I’m not sure how well this project adopts the spirit of upcycling, as I didn’t find resources to create something, and instead utilized 3D printing, but it was very cheap, I have a good final result, and I enjoyed making it. For me, starting with something in a virtual space like CAD allows me to bypass a physical barrier and just start laying out ideas and designing with no cost or physical commitment, and I appreciate that.

Sources:

(1) AXP Photography, 2024, https://parametric-architecture.com/japanese-architecture/

(2) Evan Pike, 2015, https://www.japanphotoguide.com/2015/nachi-taisha-of-kumano-kodo/

(3) Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/torii#/media/1/599912/68897

(4) Byodo-In Temple Hawaii, 2025, https://byodo-in.com/explore/#photo