4/27/2020 3D-printed houses could become concrete reality | Financial Times

Opinion The FT View

3D-printed houses could become concrete reality

The technology has significant potential to shake up the construction sector

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Construction companies may be reluctant to down tools and pick up 3D printers, but the gains could be appealing ©
Bloomberg

The editorial board FEBRUARY 15 2020

Could your next home come out of a hose? A decade ago, 3D printing technology — which builds
up objects layer by layer from materials including metals, glass, plastics and resins — was
thought to be useful mainly for making small, intricate items and components. As printers
become ever larger, new vistas are opening up. The Financial Times revealed this week that
Travis Kalanick, the Uber co-founder, had backed Habitas, a start-up that uses 3D printing
technology in constructing its hotels. The development of computer-controlled “printers” that
can produce structures fast and cheaply has the prospect of transforming construction.

That may seem rather more prosaic than some of the mooted uses for sophisticated 3D printing
in coming decades — from producing human organs from scratch to processing materials from
asteroids in orbiting factories into products to be sent back to Earth. But efforts to use the
technology for housebuilding have been under way for several years, with buildings already
constructed in countries including China, Russia and the US.

Habitas’s hotels are a new iteration of classic prefabricated building techniques. But 3D printers
can already produce homes. One machine developed by US start-up Icon stands more than 3-
metres tall and weighs over 1,700kg. The company has worked with a non-profit group to come
up with a 3D-printed home specifically for the developing world. Homes of about 55 to 75 square
metres, it says, can be “printed” in under 24 hours for $4,000.

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4/27/2020 3D-printed houses could become concrete reality | Financial Times

Construction companies may be reluctant to down tools and pick up printers. But the gains could
be appealing. Wider use of such technology opens possibilities to reduce building time and the
human muscle required. Putting up a garden shed, a conservatory or even a whole house could be
reduced to the push of a button — cutting down on effort and potential injury. Speedy
construction could be a boon in places such as disaster zones, although they will demand hardy
machines and uninterrupted energy supply.

Equally appealing is the ease with which buildings could be designed and successful blueprints
shared online. Most experiments with 3D-printed housing to date have been single-storey
buildings, but rising adoption rates could change that.

Using 3D-printed architecture might also reduce emissions from several sources. Producing parts
on site with local resources rather than shipping them would reduce reliance on global supply
chains. The precision of 3D printing could lower wastage of resources. More research is needed,
though, to assess whether 3D house building at an industrial scale is more energy efficient than
existing methods.

As with any new technology, the first step will be convincing regulators that 3D printed houses
are safe. An accident stemming from building material used, a faulty printer or questionable
blueprints could undermine the confidence of lawmakers and the public. Ensuring homes are
cost-effective on a large scale will be the next challenge: few are likely to buy a property based on
novelty of construction alone.

Moving into a home built by a machine may sound like science fiction. Yet technology has already
transformed how we live in ways that until recently would have seemed fantastical — think of the
“smart home” connecting phones, fridges, wearables and voice assistants. Given the need for
safe, affordable and sustainable housing in developing countries, and shortages in advanced
economies including the UK, the age of the house printer may not be so far away.

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