3D-printed houses equaled two-story house in Houston

3D printing is taking home building to the next level. In Houston, a giant printer is building what designers say is the first 3D-printed two-story home in the US.

The machine poured concrete from a nozzle, one layer at a time, in hot and cold weather, along with a small on-site labor force, to build a 4,000-square-foot house.

While construction 3D printing has been around for more than a decade, the technology has only just begun to take over the US housing market in the last couple of years, said Leslie Locke, the project’s architectural designer. Several 3D printed houses have already been built or are currently in development in several states.

Locke, who co-founded design firm Hannah, says her team is looking to eventually scale their designs to be able to efficiently 3D print apartment buildings.

“This project in Houston is a step towards that as it is a fairly large single-family home,” she said.

The three-bedroom home is the result of a two-year collaboration between German company Hannah Peri 3D Construction and Houston-based engineering and construction company Cive.

Proponents of the technology say 3D printing could solve a number of building challenges, including labor shortages and building more resilient homes in the face of natural disasters.

Working on a home in Houston, the team pushed the industrial printer to its limits to see how it could optimize the technology in an effort to quickly build economical and well-designed homes.

“In the future, fast and simple construction will be required to compete with other building technologies,” said Hikmat Zerbe, Head of Structural Engineering at Cive.

However, time does not matter for this new project. Zerbe calls the two-story home a “big lab” where colleagues will explore the possibilities of the technology in housing construction.

“We are not trying to be ahead of the times,” Zerbe said. “This is a case study. We study the capabilities of the machine, we study the reaction of the material under different weather conditions. We are learning to optimize print speed,” he said. “When this project is completed, we should have a very good idea of ​​how to proceed in the future.”

After the start of construction in July, the printing process is almost half completed, he said.

Concrete is better able to withstand strong winds and storms, but it is a more expensive building material than, say, wood. While a durable, low-maintenance material can save money in the long run, Zerbe says, it’s costly and time-consuming to prepare and install. But once 3D printing technology improves, he says, builders could reach a point where it would be cheaper to build than non-printed housing.

In terms of design, Lok sees an opportunity to one day offer custom features at mass scale without undue labor. For example, she used 3D printing to create unique built-in shelves for various living spaces in her Houston home.

“The printer doesn’t care if you print the same chair 100 times or 100 different chairs,” she said. “This opens up the possibility of how we can offer users a custom design, whether it’s a single-family home or an apartment building or apartment.”

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