3D Printed Walls: Housing Technology That Plays Well With Others? Or Not.

Model house printed by 3D printer
A 3D printer produced these models. Moving to a larger scale is more complicated.

3D Printers capable of creating sophisticated devices such as fireable guns have tweaked the imagination of dreamers. Those with housing on their minds are not only proposing, but actually demonstrating, that scaled up printers could one day, (maybe even soon) have a meaningful place in truly affordable house construction.1

Lately, it has been difficult to find 3D house-building experiments and demos that address an important limitation of the technology. Currently, these scaled up printers are wall printers, not house printers.

Labelling them as house printers suggests an all-in-one technology with capabilities far beyond the rather crude functions of existing machines. No doubt very few people imagine that the floral pattern of the kitchen curtains can be dialed into the printer. But articles that hype the potential of these machines suggest that entire houses can be built in a day, when in fact only the walls, important as they may be, can be extruded like toothpaste from the printer.

For an article that looks at both the current limitations of 3D wall printers, as well as their future potential, read more in Eagle Times: Around The Corner: 3D Housing Designed For The Homeless, Seniors

Another example of 3D printer-aided housing construction for people who are homeless comes from Austin, Texas, which features a creative roof solution. Read more in The Architect’s Newspaper: 3D-Printed Houses Completed For Austin’s Homeless Population

Footnotes

  1. For an earlier discussion try: 3D Printed Housing: Coming? Here? Replaces What? Can It Even Print The Wallpaper?

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