Apart from the new designs that comes with the 3D printed houses, they are relatively cheap, can be completed within a day depending on how big they are, and also the strength of the structures are assured.
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A construction tech startup ICON, together with Austin-based housing nonprofit New Story, last week at SXSW commissioned a new 3D printed house. It is a single-story model house built within 24 hours. The house has a living room, bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, and porch area, and it costs only $10,000 (£7,162) to erect.
ICON’s vision has been to make exquisite and affordable houses available to families living in slums. Talking of affordability, the company targets to cut down the cost of erecting a building to $4,000 (£2,863).
New Story CEO, Brett Hagler, said during the commissioning or unveiling that
We feel its our responsibility to challenge traditional methods, linear methods will never reach the billion [plus] people who need safe homes. Challenging our assumptions, iterating based on data, and taking calculated risks on innovative ideas will allow us to reach more families with the best possible solutions, exponentially faster.
Just like ICON, some tech construction companies located in Dubai, UK and Russia have joined the trend which is 3D-printing houses. They achieve this by researching for suitable techniques to print large structures using everything from thermoplastic composites to concrete.
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ICON uses a concrete printer by name Vulcan to release concrete material for a 600×800 square foot home within one day. According to the co-founder of ICON, Jason Ballard,
conventional construction methods have many baked-in drawbacks and problems that weve taken for granted for so long that we forgot how to imagine any alternative, with 3D printing, you not only have a continuous thermal envelope, high thermal mass, and near zero-waste, but you also have speed, a much broader design palette, next-level resiliency, and the possibility of a quantum leap in affordability. This isnt 10% better, its ten times better.
ICON has given us their assurance that their printed structures are safe and durable, built to the International Building Code (IBC) structural code standard. It is of no doubt that 3D-printing houses will reduce cost of labour which will in turn increase unemployment in the society but their vision is commendable.