3D printing is taking home construction to new heights. In Houston, a giant printer is building what designers say is the first 3D-printed two-story house in the U.S.
The machine has been pouring a concrete mix from a nozzle, one layer at a time, in hot weather and cold, alongside a sparse on-site workforce, to create a 4,000-square-foot home.
While construction 3D printing has been around for over a decade, the technology has only started to break ground in the U.S. homebuilding market over the last couple of years, said Leslie Lok, the architectural designer for the project. Several 3D-printed homes have already been built or are currently in the works across a handful of states.
Lok, who co-founded the design firm Hannah, says her team aims to eventually scale up their designs to be able to efficiently 3D print multifamily homes.
“This Houston project is a step towards that, being a pretty large single-family house,” she said.
The three-bedroom home is a two-year collaboration between Hannah, Germany-based Peri 3D Construction and Cive, an engineering and construction company in Houston.
Proponents of the technology say 3D printing could address a range of construction challenges, including labor shortages and building more resilient homes in the face of natural disasters.
With the Houston home, the team is pushing the industrial printer to its limits to understand how it can streamline the technology, in the quest to quickly build cost-effective and well-designed homes.
“In the future, it has to be fast, simple design in order to compete with other building technologies,” said Hikmat Zerbe, Cive’s head of structural engineering.
The story doesn’t say where in Houston this is, so for all we know it could be anywhere in the greater Houston area. It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t know how much of a demand there is for concrete houses. From a design perspective, that seems awfully limited. That doesn’t mean this couldn’t catch on, I’m just not sure how big the market for this might be. But I’m sure the tech will improve, and from there who knows. What do you think?
“ I don’t know how much of a demand there is for concrete houses.”
Given our tropical climate and tendency to flood, I’m surprised there’s not more of a demand.
Also, while you can’t print the concert vertically, you can produce some very interesting curved walls. Icon’s House Zero in Austin is an example:
https://www.iconbuild.com/projects/house-zero
it is in Spring Branch, but there is also zero mention of cost.
https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2022/10/04/first-ever-multi-level-3d-printed-home-is-being-built-in-houston/
How much paper would you need to print a house? How much ink?
If the house is concrete, how is it going to float out of harm’s way during one of our bi-monthly 100-year floods or when the Corp of Engineers opens the flood gates of Addicks Reservoir ?
Just sounds like a bad plan.