At TED a scientist talked about the future of 4D printing and it is pretty amazing.  To transcribe from the video the process works as such:

The technology works by printing polymers that react differently to water.  If two were printed, one would expands and one would contract.  And by intelligently combining the properties of each with blueprinted instructions, the different polymers make the shape of the final object.  So, the narrator explains that if we could send 4d printers into space we could then effectively deploy such objects that would self assemble.

Obviously we are a ways away from this but removing the need to send astronauts or actual preassembled parts to space would remove a lot of the obstacles.  This would also remove a lot of the energy and food needs and remove human error.  This is truly astounding and is likely the future of not only building space stations but deep exploration.  Instead of assuming a preassembled rocket would have to travel through all areas and conditions of space (mostly a vaccum though right), engineers could use 4D printing to change form during the journey.