Could you be printing your next home instead building it?
3D printing has come a long way, and companies are already starting to build not just homes but apartment blocks with 3D printers
Since its introduction to the market, 3D printing has made waves across various industries. Today, 3D printing is used to manufacture everything from car parts and organs to fashion accessories and food.
The technology is now being applied to homes, the upshot of which is that the global housing market could be in for something of a revolution.
Many 3D printed homes which have been constructed to date have been created with a view to providing low cost housing within a short space of time. For instance, the World’s Advanced Saving Project (WASP) recently unveiled the world’s largest ‘delta style’ 3D printer capable of printing full-scale dwellings out of mud and clay.
WASP seeks to use BigDelta to 3D print affordable housing for poverty-stricken communities in the third world, using materials such as regionally abundant clays to produce entire homes. Answers as to how the printer will do this are currently unavailable.
Chinese company WinSun Decoration Design Engineering constructed a five-story apartment block and an 11,840 square-foot (1,100 square-meter), residence, which cost $161,000 to construct. What the company claims are the world’s tallest 3D-printed building and the world’s first 3D-printed large residence are currently on display in China’s Suzhou Industrial Park in the eastern Jiangsu province.
When viewed against the backdrop that an estimated 100 000 new homes will be needed every day over the next 15 years to meet the needs of a growing low income populace, the need for such homes becomes abundantly clear.
But printed homes are not just being made to cater to low-income, impoverished or displaced people in need of ‘instant’ homes. Chinese company ZhuoDa recently assembled an upmarket two storey villa in Xian in less than three hours. The villa comprises six 3D printed modules which were printed offsite prior to being assembled like Lego bricks in front of a live audience.
The modules are printed from a mix of industrial and agricultural waste, are fireproof and can withstand high magnitude earthquakes. Post construction, decorative sheet textures can be applied to each module. Homeowners will also be given the option to choose from textures such as jade, marble, wood and granite. It takes just 10 days to produce one of the villas from scratch at a reduced cost of between $400 and $480 per square meter. On average it takes around six months to build a similar home using traditional methods.
Various other versions of printed homes are beginning to trickle through to the global market place. Printed homes have the potential to revolutionise the building industry.
