Two years ago, a 3D print entrepreneur disappeared mysteriously in the Philippines. Does anyone know what happened?
The story involved Lewis Yakich, an american entrepreneur from California, who had partnered with some folks from the Philippines to 3D print buildings.
It was actually a great concept for 3D printed buildings, perhaps the first we saw that actually made commercial sense. Their concept was to 3D print a mold for the walls of a building, and then fill them up with concrete. It allowed for relatively rapid printing and production.
But the most interesting aspect to me was that it fit within the local economy of the Philippines. I was told that building construction projects there were often problematic due to the unreliability of the work force, sometimes causing significant delays in projects.
The brilliancy of the Yakich idea was that their process short circuited these problems. The printing and pouring could be done in very rapid time, so much so that it was actually more economical to produce buildings in this way.
That approach might not have been financially feasible in other regions, where the construction economy may operate differently. And that’s one of the key points we always raise about 3D printed building projects: they only work in certain situations.
This all sounds very successful, but then suddenly our contact with Yakich went dark. We were puzzled why this could be, as startup companies such as his often scramble for media attention. Reach outs went unanswered.
Then the picture became clear: Yakich apparently disappeared under very mysterious – and possibly violent – circumstances. The full story is here, showing an amount of evidence suggesting things were not good at that time in the Philippines.
Every once in a while I still look online to see if there have been any developments, but thus far I’ve found none. It seems that Yakich has truly disappeared.
Recently we received an enquiry from a friend of Yakich who had been looking for him, and then stumbled across our story. The friend is seeking any additional information about the whereabouts of Yakich.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any updates.
My question to you, our readers, is this: do you? Does anyone have any further information on what happened to Yakich? If you know something, let us know.
