3D printing houses : promising but nowhere near ready yet

In Texas, tucked behind a house for the wealthy, perhaps lies some hope for the significantly less so. More than a billion people in the world go to sleep each night without reliable shelter. But a pair of companies working on solving that believes their model of quickly 3D-printing a one-story house could not only provide merely a roof over the head, but a genuinely great place to live.

So far it doesn't look remotely like a great place to live, or even particularly decent, but it's better than many alternatives. That said, the exterior looks a lot more credible than the interior.

The 650-square feet dwelling required about $10,000 (£7,000) of concrete, and took 48 hours. Eventually the goal is to bring the cost down significantly by using a mixture of economies of scale - buy concrete in bulk - and improvements to the 3D-printing machine. The goal build time is between 12 and 24 hours.

Like small-scale 3D-printing, the system works by slowly adding material, layer-by-layer. In this case, that material is mortar, similar to concrete. The height and width of the house is constrained by size of an an enormous metal frame, which operates autonomously once given its instructions. "We can print up to 11ft tall with this machine," explained Alex Le Roux, chief executive of Icon.

I would imagine this isn't difficult to enlarge, as long as the device is strong enough to support the weight of the concrete at greater heights.

As I stepped inside, I found a small but capable structure. It certainly wasn't a shack, but a building that looked like it would withstand extreme weather, and wear and tear. At the time of my visit, the work on the interior had just begun. A small army of construction workers noisily worked on a wooden roof, windows and other touches. Over the next few hours the home would be made complete, furnished and fitted with plumbing and electricity. The concrete aesthetic was still visible, which, depending on your view, either feels cold and brutal, or stylishly minimalist. I'd be inclined to say the latter - this is a home that would appeal to those living in high-rent overpopulated cities all over the globe.

It looks pretty bad to me. Need an automatic plasterer or wallpaper-putting-up gizmo, then it would look credible. It's still "roof over your head" at this stage. That's fine - fantastic, even - if you want to build affordable homes for the destitute, but not if you want to say they're a "genuinely great place to live".

"What we've seen from our past families, is that the quicker you get families into safe shelter, the quicker they're actually able to get an income. Or get a microloan, and start a business. By getting families into homes faster - that's actually a smarter way to find jobs than just having construction jobs." That said, Mr Hagler believed the machines will be operated by local construction workers, and it is hoped the lower cost of each unit would in turn mean more demand for more houses to be built.


http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43411581