44 ms·

A house 3D printed from raw earth

315 points by zoshi 5y ago

newsbinator 5y ago
In all of these demos, they never show you the resulting bathroom, shower, or kitchen. It's always "here's a shell we made". I'd like to see the finished house, with fixtures in place and working.
- varjag 5y ago
  While am generally a 3d printing skeptic I feel it's not quite a fair take. The bulk of a house (and its major cost component) is the structure. So this could be useful even if it can't print you the bathroom and the fridge. How well it going to work in practice is another matter (and here's where am skeptical).
  - kube-system 5y ago
    The structure also has to accommodate those features. They’re not wholly independent.
    - dcolkitt 5y ago
      With pex plumbing and high velocity HVAC, you only need to run small, flexible tubes through the framing. It should be relatively easy to print small, flexible holes for tubing. Agree that traditional ductwork and copper pipping would be hard to accommodate.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        Drainage is the hard part. The pipes are larger and require you to cooperate with gravity.
        JAlexoid 5y ago
        Sewage is absolutely NOT a problem for a single story houses. No large sewage pipes are installed in the walls of all single story houses.
        kube-system 5y ago
        Sometimes they are. My house is single story and has sewage pipes in the walls. Regardless of whether that is a requirement, the pipes have to go through some part of the structure to get to the outside, regardless of whether that's a wall, floor, foundation, etc.
        throwaway316943 5y ago
        It’s possible but only done for convenience where it makes sense to, not a requirement for new construction since you just put the pipes in before the pad gets poured.
        throwawayboise 5y ago
        Yes but GP said large pipes, e.g. for a toilet or the main pipe that connects to the municipal sewer. In a single-story house these would be under the floor. Pipes in the walls of a single-story house would be sink drains or vent pipes, and are narrower.
        quickthrowman 5y ago
        Your toilet pipes are inside a wall? That’s pretty strange, toilet drain pipe is usually 3” dia. Are there 90 degree bends? I don’t understand how or why you’d put a toilet drain pipe in a wall when the drain pipe is in the middle of a bathroom floor, not in a wall. Are you sure you aren’t thinking of sink drains?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - dagw 5y ago
    The bulk of a house (and its major cost component) is the structure Using current pre-fab techniques a half dozen builders can raise the core structure of a single family house in a few days. A friend of mine is in the process of building a house and raising the core structure was the fastest and easiest part of the whole process. I don't see this being either cheaper or faster. The bulk of the cost in many cases is things independent of the actual house, like purchasing the land, doing the ground work and the foundations and pulling in water and sewage.
    - mrfusion 5y ago
      Well lumbar is expensive too now.
      - canadianfella 5y ago
        Lumber
      - dagw 5y ago
        True. The question is if that is just a temporary thing or the new normal. I suspect prices will be back to 'normal' in a year
        karlerss 5y ago
        There was a deep dive about this in Bloomberg Odd Lots podcast. Although some of the price increase was due to the industry predicting lower demand and getting rid of inventory. Another, more fundamental factor is the actual scarcity of lumber due to lower harvesting quotas set by Canadian govt. These quotas are unlikely to go up any time soon.
        throwaway316943 5y ago
        They aren’t going to maintain a 3x increase in price though. If they do we’re going to see a lot of new sawmills starting up.
    - 5y ago
  - idiotsecant 5y ago
    Absolutely not true. This is often referred to as the 'envelope' in construction and its not the majority of the cost of overall construction (or wasnt before the current outrageous lumber prices)
  - mnouquet 5y ago
    > The bulk of a house (and its major cost component) is the structure That's blatantly false, the structure is the easy part.
- 00jimbo 5y ago
  they show you the kitchen and a shot of the bathroom sink in these pictures, actually. it's just so minimalist that it's not that obvious. not quite to my taste but that's in part because they just want to show off the building itself. really, though, you can finish them like any other house; there's nothing special about the kitchen, bathroom, or walls that precludes it. aside from the striping, i imagine there's not that much different about building internal structures into a house like this than there is into more traditional rammed earth housing.
  - 0df8dkdf 5y ago
    What about plumbing and water resistance to humidity in the bathroom?
    - laumars 5y ago
      The problem is the same irrespective of how the house is built. You need holes for pipes and holes for an extractor fan. The bonus here is that 3D printed surfaces mean you don’t need to drill out material to make the holes.
- mft_ 5y ago
  Not sure that fitting a bathroom or kitchen is the difficult part of the concept, though. It reminds me a little of an old Grand Designs episode. [0] Different, in that (AFAICT) the 3D-printed house isn't designed to have high thermal mass (the 'earthship' concept) but it gives an idea how a fully-functional house can be crafted from a lot of earth and work quite well. [0] https://www.granddesignsmagazine.com/grand-designs-houses/977-inside-the-grand-designs-earthship-house https://www.granddesignsmagazine.com/grand-designs-houses/97...
  - nunb 5y ago
    When you mentioned Grand Designs, I was expecting a link to the FACIT [0] house! I suppose that's CNC or cutting/routing based though... [0] https://vimeo.com/53932758 https://vimeo.com/53932758
    - kbenson 5y ago
      I have to say, it's an interesting design. I have my reservations about portions of it though. Insulation of recycled newspaper makes me very uncomfortable with the idea of what happens if it catches fire. That said, it's just one small aspect of the whole I'm uneasy with so far (but I haven't watched it all).
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  Modern bathroom pods are very easy to install and come in pre-configured sizes. They're literally just plug and play. After that, the only challenge is making sure you have plumbing connections at the bathroom and kitchen sites. But modern pex plumbing makes that pretty easy. You're just running flexible rubber tubes from the multiplexer. In this sort of design, I'd imagine you can just pre-print the holes for the tubes, or punch through where needed.
  - ogre_codes 5y ago
    Modern houses are very easy to install and come in preconfigured shapes. They ship flat packed components and drop them on site for low skilled workers to build. They include things like bathrooms and kitchens as part of the build.
  - coding123 5y ago
    Pex does nothing for sewer water however.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  There are a few shots showing the floorplan and utilities. This illustrates the bath and kitchen areas. Looks as if there's a cooktop but no oven. The bath includes a sink, shower, and WC. https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2021/02/a-3d-printed-global-housing-community-is-being-constructed-in-italy-for-sustainable-living/15-tecla_yankodesign.jpg https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2021/02/a-3d-...
barry27 5y ago
Does it have plumbing? Wiring? Or did they 3D print a shelter.
DougN7 5y ago
Would this survive a rain storm or would it turn to mud? I couldn’t tell from the article.
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  It would pretty quickly erode away. I think that's why they've built it in a desert. Don't have to worry about rain if there is no rain!
  - p_l 5y ago
    It's in Ravenna, that's not a desert. The material used probably involves some form of binder, rammed earth is also an option but it doesn't look like rammed earth from the photos.
  - bobthechef 5y ago
    Rain can be torrential in the desert.
- deckar01 5y ago
  > The collaboration between MC A and WASP has been supported by Mapei, a worldwide producer of construction materials, which has studied the clay materials and identified the key components within the raw earth mixture to create the final highly optimised printable product. https://www.3dwasp.com/en/3d-printed-house-tecla/ https://www.3dwasp.com/en/3d-printed-house-tecla/ I think its safe to assume that the raw clay has been processed into a material more suitable for masonry.
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    It says that it's been optimized to be printable, not for longevity or other characteristics needed in construction. What are the tradeoffs?
    - laumars 5y ago
      I would imagine if this house isn’t strong then future designs would be. Bricks and coffee mugs are also made out of clay so it’s not like we don’t already have a long history of experience working with the substance to create durable materials.
LinuxBender 5y ago
I like the idea. Have these been put through stress tests? i.e. Wind tunnels, simulated forest fire, floods, earthquake, cold / hot weather, powder actuated projectiles and how do they compare to traditional wooden framed or steel framed homes? What is the thermal insulation rating? I would expect thermals to be pretty good. I've seen similar designs using aircrete [1] and those are fire-resistant. How strong is this compared to aircrete? [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VcdwDRNPzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VcdwDRNPzA
- adriancr 5y ago
  I assume it has the same longevity as things built out of mudbricks...
  - sneak 5y ago
    So, it's going to have to switch to a subscription model eventually to continue to exist?
    - abdullahkhalids 5y ago
      In my country, some poor people (unfortunately) live in mud houses. They periodically add a new layer of mud, as the old layers get eroded away. I imagine, this could be done by a robot for this 3D structure. Of course, this depends on house not collapsing under heavy rain.
      - adriancr 5y ago
        or critters digging through walls and into your house
      - sneak 5y ago
        Creative Ground.
    - bogwog 5y ago
      gotem
frankbreetz 5y ago
Cool idea, the lack of discussion of longevity seems pretty glaring. While we would all love to not cause any stress on the environment, we also have to live though heavy rains, snow, and wind. Maybe this structure is designed for dry environment and can with stand a couple of rains a year. >>The architect studied how a building’s shape could impact its efficiency, in relation to its climate and latitude. hopefully someone also studied materials the house is made of, because that seems pretty important. Dirt is a very good insulator of both heat and sound, so maybe they could build something like this a put some sort of shell around it, like siding on current houses, to protect it from weather.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  Disposable housing is common in some cultures who value new construction. Having a house naturally erode is better than what happens in Japan for example: [...] the value of the average Japanese house depreciates to zero in 22 years. (It is calculated separately from the land, which is more likely to hold its value.) Most are knocked down and rebuilt. Sales of new homes far outstrip those of used ones, which usually change hands in the expectation that they will be demolished and replaced. In America and Europe second-hand houses accounted for 90% of sales and new-builds for 10% in 2017. In Japan the proportions are the other way around. — The Economist
- dakna 5y ago
  > Dirt is a very good insulator of both heat and sound Sound yes, heat not so much. While it can store heat due to it's thermal mass, it will release it quickly due to a low R-value, depending on moisture content the R-value could be below 1 per inch. Cellulose has around 3.5 per inch. Without adding additional insulation to restrict thermal transfer, you need to build very thick walls. In sunny desert climates where days are hot and nights are cold, you can build your wall in a way that allows it to go through the heat exchange synced with the 24hr sun cycle, and then it's very efficient. Thinner cob walls need to be wrapped with insulation to slow down heat transfer.
  - goda90 5y ago
    From the looks of the video and pictures, they are going with pretty thick walls, and lots of air pockets. The dirt itself might not be the best insulator, but I think the whole wall would do well.
Oktokolo 5y ago
Looks, like they where real careful to not include any technical detail that would explain, how they manage to get that buildings stable and rain proof... Probably bullshit.
ISL 5y ago
How well do structures like these perform in earthquakes? I can imagine that they might outperform some masonry but be inferior to modern stick-built?
reversengineer 5y ago
Excellent idea as a proof of concept, and even beautiful in design. However one cannot help but wonder how structurally sound these materials are. Stress tests are needed to determine how well this would hold up over years of exposure to the elements before being produced en masse. For a sustainable alternative, homes made from repurposed shipping containers are a cost-effective solution for housing. They are made of weather-resistant Steel which, while not rust-proof, will not rot. A single unit can be kitted out and furnished for as little as $25,000, and yields 300+ square feet of space, comparable to a smaller studio apartment. Check out the YouTube Channel "Containing Luxury" which illustrates the sustainability of Container Homes and demonstrates them as a solution to several housing issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_sclvzg9dM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_sclvzg9dM
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  I don't understand why people think shipping containers are a good idea for housing. They were never designed for this and will always be compromised when you come to put windows, doors, insulation and services in them.
  - kingsuper20 5y ago
    I guess because a shipping container is rectangular and that a house can be rectangular. This wasn't a bad series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA5fh29rhLs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA5fh29rhLs Put me in the 'shipping containers make shitty houses' camp.
    - hindsightbias 5y ago
      I love that they wood frame the interiors for insulation and walls. Could have just built a wood frame house. Quicker, faster and more roomy.
      - saalweachter 5y ago
        $80 / square foot is, like, cheap, but I'm not sure I would really call it amazingly cheap.
3dee 5y ago
It seems to be a mixture of clay, salt, rice fibers and lime. So I guess the lime prevents erosion.
- RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
  Mineralization. Effectively turns the aggregate into a kind of concrete. I would put a significant bet down that the energy cost of the lime is not accounted for in their 6kwh calculation.
alexvoda 5y ago
It looks like sea urchins.
ramboldio 5y ago
Stunning Aesthetics and sustainability characteristics. Unsure whether it is a contender of factory-built prefab homes when it comes to affordability & speed. 30 story building build in 15 days - prefabricated skyscraper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajlUVSiUvWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajlUVSiUvWg
noughtme 5y ago
You might be more familiar with Mapei, the company that developed the material, TECLA. They are tight lipped about the actual ingredients and chemistry, but it seems to rely on soil that naturally contains cement or lime. The structure also requires a spray applied coating to ensure waterproofness. https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/finally-credible-prototype-sustainable-3d-printed-housing/ https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/finally-credible-p...
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  Just a nit-pick, but the spray applicants generally render earthen buildings moisture resistant, not waterproof. You generally use the old tried and true methods to handle moisture, water and rain. "Good hat. Good boots." Well coordinating landscaping. And appropriate interior ventilation in critical areas.
  - noughtme 5y ago
    Yes and no. Having worked in building construction, both classes of coatings would have relevant applications. I was going to complain that Mapei has not released any technical details, but it appears they have: https://www.mapei.com/it/en/news-and-events/event-detail/2019/11/04/mapei-research-and-technology-for-tecla https://www.mapei.com/it/en/news-and-events/event-detail/201... However, that their "water-repellent" provides "waterproofing" does not clear things up.
    - Animats 5y ago
      The actual products that make it work: Mapesoil 10.[1] "High-performance, fibre-reinforced powdered stabilising agent for sports sub-base contruction surfaces".The amount of Mapesoil 10 required is 3%-5% of the dirt weight. Comes in 500kg bags, on pallets. Dynamon SR4 [2] "Superplasticizer based on acrylic polymer for concrete with long slump retention". About 1%-2% of the mix. That gets the material through the 3D printer without clogging. Planicrete [3] "Synthetic-rubber latex to improve the adhesion of cement mixes". About 2% of the mix. That helps each layer adhere to the previous layers, the usual problem with 3D printing. These are all standard additives for concrete. There's also a waterproofing agent sprayed on afterwards. The same materials would probably work with concrete forms. Plus, then you could do tamping. The trouble with most of these 3D building systems is that there's no tamping or ramming to solidify the material. It's just squirted on like toothpaste. So problems with voids and leakage are to be expected. All this requires the right dirt. Probably something with a high clay content. Too much sand or too much topsoil and it probably won't become hard enough. As with rammed earth construction [4] this may not hold up in wet climates. [1] https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-documents/5904_mapesoil100_gb.pdf https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-... [2] https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-documents/688_dynamonsr4_gb.pdf https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-... [3] https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-documents/701-planicrete-gb.pdf https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-... [4] https://www.firstinarchitecture.co.uk/rammed-earth-construction/ https://www.firstinarchitecture.co.uk/rammed-earth-construct...
cheschire 5y ago
I hope 3D printing homes will take off now that lumber prices are so ridiculous. The sudden cost increases in other materials will now hopefully give 3d printing space to achieve economies of scale. Imagine homes that are printed with a 20 year life expectancy. Especially in America where I don't know many families that remain in the same house for 20 years. We could start going to the Japanese model of razing the house as an expected part of the land purchase. This has the added benefit of making it significantly easier to keep houses up to modern code.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  I think that's the first time I've heard of someone considering the Japanese home ownership model aspirational. Isn't that also where the 100 year mortgage idea started? I'd rather see that we built really solid houses that are fundamentally designed for ease of renovation, rather than routinely raze and rebuild from scratch. Code improves over time but not on a timescale that makes 20-year rebuilds sensible.
  - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
    Unfortunately a lot of the rebuilds happens because of dramatic code changes. Houses built just 5 years ago will often be illegal to build again. Only way to bring it up to code is total remodel or worse tear down.
    - mikeg8 5y ago
      This is an extremely exaggerated take. Again, the building codes do not upgrade on that fast of a time scale and even if a house is technically not up to code, they are grandfathered in based on the time they were built. A house that was built 10, 20, even 30 years ago, is still totally fine to live in, even if not up to the most current codes.
      - Logon90 5y ago
        This tells you everything you need to know about the current codes.
travisporter 5y ago
Domes are ubiquitous throughout sci-fi. Why don't we have a competition to, say print domes or homes autonomously in antarctica or sahara?
- bluGill 5y ago
  Because domes are a terrible shape for humans. You can't hang pictures on the walls - the curve makes weird things happen. Likewise your furniture can't be against the wall it must be out to account for the curve. Domes look cool, so of course fiction is full of them. They are not impossible to build so a few people have built them. They are not a good shape though, so they won't catch on.
  - bobthechef 5y ago
    Right. They're impractical and a poor use of space. Also, it constrains how much of the space is walkable without bumping your head into the wall/ceiling. It's like living in an attic.
epx 5y ago
Remembers the Terrafoam of Mannah short story. Hope it is not a sign…
mushbino 5y ago
To really solve the housing crisis we'll need to use this device to print some affordable land first.
- doh 5y ago
  There is plenty of land, just not in desirable locations. But if you could build infrastructure easily and with speed, maybe those locations can be transformed too. Up until last 40 years ago people didn't want to live on the ocean. Now they can't get enough. US has a huge swaths of land empty, especially in the Pacific Northwest.
  - wing-_-nuts 5y ago
    >Up until last 40 years ago people didn't want to live on the ocean. Now they can't get enough. US has a huge swaths of land empty, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Can you expand on this please? What do you mean by 'people didn't want to live on the ocean' and also, what do you mean by 'vast swaths of empty land in the PNW'. Are you talking east of the cascades? I don't think there is a whole lot of land there with an oceanic climate?
    - doh 5y ago
      > What do you mean by 'people didn't want to live on the ocean' I remember Arnold Schwarzenegger being confused why "nobody" wanted to live in Santa Monica or Venice Beach to a point that the government was subsidizing it to attract people. For instance north of San Diego there are old apartment buildings on the water that have only window facing the ocean in their bathroom. Historically ocean was considered as a hassle. You have to deal with the salty air that breaks down many material quite swiftly. In Turkey, fathers would give the prime land to their sons (pastures) and the crap land to their daughters (ocean fronts). How the world changed. > what do you mean by 'vast swaths of empty land in the PNW' If you go anywhere outside of the majors settlements there are major swaths of empty land which is fairly cheap, but there is no infrastructure there and people don't want to be the city founders anymore.
blitz_skull 5y ago
> needed no materials to be transported to the site Has glass doors... To be sure, this is really cool—breakthrough even. But the headlines are just factually inaccurate.
surgeryres 5y ago
Yet another example of the over-hype of “3D Printing”. Yes it’s neat that they collected some local dirt, mixed it with some non-locally sourced water and binder, and poured it into an extruder run on some kind of non locally sourced energy, then sprayed it with some protective coating - it baffles me that people see this as a possible mainstream building technique. Running electrical, plumbing, air conditioning etc through this structure is doable but much harder, as the expectations of these niceties have evolved with modern construction and need easy access and hiding with things like dry wall. This almost reads as an onion article with the headline “brilliant scientists figure out how to overcomplicate the construction of mud huts similar to our earliest human ancestors”.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  And this technique really wouldn’t work well in impoverished places where people need shelter. It works well when there’s a lot of local technology but not a lot of labor, precisely the opposite working conditions in much of Africa.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  Exactly. God knows how many concepts I've seen for mixing local soils with magic powder and (typically) forming up walls. I do like that these guys could make rather free-form structures, but building an envelope is straightforward and runs into the issues of actually using the thing (seismic&water issues, installation of utilities, insulation, HVAC, longevity, insurance). It's pretty hard to beat traditional methods and anything new typically has to be measurably quite a lot better. If a person wanted to drive down costs, I'd probably tend more towards larger prefab components. Maybe it's not so different from software in these areas.
  - bilbo0s 5y ago
    You bring up a good point. I have yet to see anyone construct some of these structures on a shake table and report the resultant data. I wouldn't look for unreasonably good performance, but I wonder how it would perform against, for instance, modern rammed earth structures? If any engineers out there have links to tests or studies please do post them.
intrasight 5y ago
Is beautiful!
55555 5y ago
I thought this was going to be about... bricks. Houses are traditionally made from earth.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  Not in the US. Americans prefer living in cardboard boxes. I mean, timber frame and drywall palaces.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    You mean affordable structures made out of renewables and built to the latest safety and efficiency standards? I always feel like this sentiment sounds like nostalgia some express about the "sturdy" cars of the 60's. Sure, you can hit them with a hammer without a dent, but the engineering is crap.
    - mnouquet 5y ago
      The modern car's engineering of modern car might be astonishing, but at this point there is so much disposable parts that I question their environmental friendliness...
      - kube-system 5y ago
        Like what? Modern maintenance intervals are way longer than in the past, and vehicles today are way more reliable and last longer in general.
        mnouquet 5y ago
        Reliance on non-repairable electronics everywhere, fully sealed mechanical parts, etc. Efficiency comes at the cost of more moving parts, more sensors, higher pressure, tighter tolerances, which all introduces more failure points harder to debug/replace. Not to mention lighter thinner non-cost prohibitive materials are easier to damage. As a rule of thumb, I will only buy pre-2008 vehicles, things only went from bad to worst after that era.
mbgerring 5y ago
Every one of these obnoxious mud huts I’ve ever seen are single story, on like 10 acres of land, in a car-dependent rural area. More people living like this would worsen every current issue we face with environmental sustainability.
- flatline 5y ago
  Good luck trying to get permits to build anything the slightest bit unconventional in any populated area. I looked at building a geodesic dome, and was going to end up in the boonies and likely still paying off the inspector to pull permits. You could get it done in town and it would have to be over-built, completely ruining the whole efficiency angle of the dome to begin with, and taking months or years to work through the process.
  - bruiseralmighty 5y ago
    Yeah basically this. Trying to build an eco-structure or even a mostly earthen home in the US you are basically relegated to a sparsely populated counties or taking your chances squatting on Federal land. This was quite eye-opening to me once I had to actually attempt to find some land to build on.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      For good reason - most of these things don't have good engineering behind them. Standard stick frame construction has good insulation values (dirt/clay/mud/cement does not), holds up to weather, earthquakes, and has reasonable fire protection (it burns but in known amounts). This is all backed up by a lot of engineering data that doesn't exist for most alternatives, they might be better, but nobody has actually run all the angles to be sure.
      - bruiseralmighty 5y ago
        I don't disagree with you actually. I believe that building codes generally keep us safer and create a better standard of house. Most people don't want to become test subjects for an experimental technology. My point is just that the current building codes necessitate experimenting away from more developed areas in order to innovate and that this should not be held against examples of construction innovation. After having had to search for land I would say that I feel that building codes are perhaps not overly restrictive, but too ubiquitous. Most experimentation and innovation can only happen on small patches of remote scrubland with poor soil, deep ground water, and limited access to the internet. It would be nice if some of these projects could take place 15 minutes out of a mid-sized town rather than 40 minutes to an hour. I can see the value in enforcement within a city's limits, but we could get faster building innovation if counties and states were laxer with building codes on their unincorporated land.
nanna 5y ago
Lots of unfair negativity here. I think this is wonderful. HN is full of random hacked-up tech that will never solve the worlds problems but nonetheless give a glimpse at what alternatives could look like. Experiments. This is what this is, and in my opinion it's stunning and I would move into one in an instant.
- judge2020 5y ago
  HN worries about the hard problems because they're real challenges that need to be solved before any improvements reach the wider market.
  - dalbasal 5y ago
    Nonsense. HN worries (enjoys, rather) problems that appeal to them. Linux running on a pen. A new programming framework demonstrates an abstract point. Etc. What HN is doing here is internalizing cliches, responding to hyperbole/tropes they (we) assume is in the article. Also, the artsy-philosphical terms used by architects pisses off nerds. "Humane Architecture" and whatnot. This is HN being silly, not HN being smart. We do both here. Meanwhile, how is transporting materials vs equipment a Hard Problem?
    - brudgers 5y ago
      Doom running on an HP printer is interesting because it is clever and because being clever was reason enough to do it. This isn’t clever. It is a string of tech buzzwords washed with green buzzwords. Or to put it another way nobody really cares how their house is built. The PHP of construction materials and methods is just as good for just about everyone because what mostly matters is location. The advantage of materials is the ability to stockpile. Their higher degree of asynchronisity. It is possible to maintain an inventory of prefabricated components. An on-site machine has vast temporal dependencies. And the most common word in construction might be “delayed”...at least it can feel that way at times. And no place is more full of surprises than what is underground.
    - jack_riminton 5y ago
SeanFerree 5y ago
Very cool!
101001001001 5y ago
You can take soil and mix it with a little sand and cement and compress it into a brick. It’s called earth blocks. It’s interesting to consider how cheaply one could build structures if they are mostly dirt.
m0llusk 5y ago
It seems strange that there is so much focus on 3D printing structures. Any close look at where the costs go in home construction can easily verify that foundations and services (power, water, sewage) are where the majority of the costs are. It always makes sense to pinch pennies, but starting with one of the smallest line items limits potential improvement. What we really need are ongoing improvements to modular service installations. This is also a complex cultural problem here as well because even though there are obvious ways of making even comparisons such as time and money spent before receiving a use permit the culture of construction likes to focus on a single innovation while leaving the rest out. There is a modular apartment building near me that took only hours to assemble from the component modules. However, doing that took many months of site preparation and module delivery and after the several hours construction it has still been months to get finishing done, construct sidewalks, and the rest. Without some general agreement about how to measure construction costs and time it is easy to present innovations that are either minor improvements or actually steps backward.
- mdorazio 5y ago
  Yup. Foundation, services, and interiors are your big line items. The shell tends to be both cheap and very quick to build with common materials.
- elihu 5y ago
  It seems like installing electrical and plumbing could be a lot easier if a 3D printed building was constructed with all the necessary channels for utilities already there in the walls, and all you have to do is feed wires and pipes through the routes and connect everything. Similarly, finish work is simpler if you don't have to put sheet rock up, and can just use the existing wall texture. I think the bigger advantage to 3D printed architecture, though, is that you can make drastic changes to the design of a building without having to consider whether a contractor with the necessary skills is available to do the work or spend any effort trying to communicate the design to another human. For example, if I'm an architect and my client wants their living room to look like a gothic cathedral, I could design their living room to look like a gothic cathedral without having to worry about whether I can find a builder who knows how to construct a vaulted arch ceiling. I'd just have to make sure it's within the capabilities of the construction machine and conforms to structural requirements. That opens up a lot of possibilities, especially when it comes to organic shapes, curves, and non-right-angles.
whall6 5y ago
I want a dirt house
williesleg 5y ago
That's the guy on youtube that builds the mansions with swimming pools with a knife and a stick, right?
ChucklesNorris 5y ago
Unfortunately, it's susceptible to a big bad wolf attack.
tdhz77 5y ago
Looks like LUKE SKYWALKER was born here.
mort1merp0 5y ago
I don't quite understand what they mean by the term “humane” architecture. I see that is has low carbon footprint, is made of local materials. But is that what they are defining as "humane" architecture?
- ratsforhorses 5y ago
  I suppose one might consider the aspect that with ciment a lot of sand is used, which is a bane on the rivers (in Africa) causing terrible devastation... beyond that just the back breaking work of building a home ...seems much more "humane" if done by these methods...
Gibbon1 5y ago
The pictures reminds me of my uncle. He was a VP in charge of the companies real estate holdings. What he said about dealing with architects. 'That's nice but I was thinking of something... square. I'm into right angles'
29athrowaway 5y ago
If you like this, look up "superadobe".
mkaic 5y ago
This is superb. Obviously it's just a tech demo, but I'm optimistic for 3D printed houses in general in the near future. Exciting stuff!
ChucklesNorris 5y ago
Unfortunately, it's susceptible to the big bad wolf.
suyash 5y ago
Actually this might be the first house fully 3D printed by IIT Students in India https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/iit-madras-startup-builds-indias-first-3d-printed-house/articleshow/82276447.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/iit-madras-...
- freetime2 5y ago
  The "from raw earth" part is what makes the parent a first. The house in your link is "India's first". Both houses look very cool to me!
xyst 5y ago
construction workers about to be automated out
trilinearnz 5y ago
My first thought was "Yeah, but I bet it's not really printed, just transported printed prefabs to the site". Nope, it's actually printed on-site! Second thought is that the interior looks very Star Trek / Star Wars like. Some confirmation of the non-leakiness of the walls would be good, but otherwise looks extremely promising as a concept.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
gimmeThaBeet 5y ago
I see that WASP stands for World's Advanced Saving project, but I did have a bit of a chuckle thinking if they wanted to call it VESPA, but that was taken already. Very cool looking structure.
Black101 5y ago
I have seen 3D printed homes before... raw earth is a lot misleading though
breck 5y ago
Wow. This feels like a big deal. Like, 3D printed homes could noticeably change our world in the next 10-30 years. That hadn't really clicked for me until seeing this. Pretty amazing work.
swayvil 5y ago
That's a nice tech. I'd rather have yr basic optimal hemieggoid tho. Too Rococo. That looks like good substrate for some kind of fat polymer coating. Needs windows. How does it stand up to the wet?
maliker 5y ago
This brought to mind opensourceecology.org, which was going some work with compressed earth brick buildings. They were getting a lot of attention five or so years ago. Good to see they’re still working towards their goal and are in good company.
Tiereven 5y ago
From a housing aspect, the actual project is a nice, architecturally interesting piece of art. But conceptually it could be a remarkable milestone. Has this project any relation to similar off-earth construction research? Could the methods here be extended to lunar regolith or martian soil? What development is still needed before this can become fully autonomous and able to build many structures before requiring service or additional additives?
varispeed 5y ago
Building a house was never a problem and the huge costs are mostly artificial. The biggest problem is regulation and that you need to have a lot of money to convince local authority to grant a permission to build. It is out of reach for a regular citizen. You can't even build a mud hut without a blessing of a civil servant, and they hate when regular people want to build something as they don't have means to grease their hands.
- CuriouslyC 5y ago
  Unless you live in parts of Tennessee or Idaho where codes are not enforced.
- oblio 5y ago
  That's partially true. But, if you build a house and it collapses on top of you, who's responsible? Who pays for your medical expenses? Even worse, if the house collapses and it falls on top of your guests, who's responsible? Who pays for everyone's medical expenses? That's just one random example, there are many ways a house can fail.
owenversteeg 5y ago
The interesting thing with all these alternative construction methods is that they end up having much larger costs in one way or another. I'm a huge fan of "alternative living" (lived in a boat I built myself for years) but even I can't convince myself to build a home with one of these alternative methods (shipping container, 3D printing, compressed earth block, adobe, wattle and daub, concrete block, etc.) First there's the permitting process. Then there's the construction costs. Then there's the safety aspect (many of these homes are a disaster with earthquakes/fire/water issues.) An underappreciated thing is how easy having straight walls makes construction. Having lived in a boat with curved walls, I would never consider a land home with curved walls. The beauty of the curve does NOT make it worth it, unless you plan to hire someone at great expense to do all the work for you. Yes, it's that bad, your 4 day cabinet project will become 4 weeks in no time. Instead of being able to simply plop in premade components (windows, benches, cabinets, beds, etc etc) you'll now need to custom build absolutely everything. Even the parts that seem simple are not. Laying flooring in a square room is simple enough. In a small curved room, you'll have to cut a ton of pieces with a strange curve. Then you have to lay them to meet up with the curved walls. It's a nightmare. You're also negating part of the eco-friendly aspect, by the way, when you have to discard huge amounts of curvy pieces of material (trust me, you'll cut large pieces wrong more than a few times.) That's one reason why I find this 3D printing clay project quite cool - you can simply 3D print benches, cabinets, walls etc to nestle right up to the curve. I'd be very curious to hear from anyone here who tried to save money while building a home, but I would suspect that the answer is to go small and minimize labor. Even minimizing labor, you're going to need permits, a foundation, electrical, HVAC, a roof, etc, so it's not going to be nearly as cheap as you think. If anyone is interested in a good cost breakdown of house construction costs, I like this one: https://www.nahbclassic.org/generic.aspx?sectionID=734&genericContentID=271883&channelID=311 https://www.nahbclassic.org/generic.aspx?sectionID=734&gener... You'll notice that the sum total of framing + exterior finishes (framing, exterior wall finishes, roof, windows and doors, etc) come out to around 30% of the construction cost of a new home, or around 18.5% of the total cost of a new home. So this machine can save you at maximum 30% of the construction cost. The rest is pretty much fixed: landscaping+deck+driveway = 6.8%, interior finishing = 25.4%, plumbing/electrical/HVAC = 15%, foundation = 12%, permits/sewer/fees = 6%. Which gets to my last point: the issue with technologies like these is that people compare their best-case projections for one part of the system to the total costs of the existing solution (traditional stick built construction) in the same way people make arguments for Gadgetbahn type projects. You see that the average new single family home costs $485k and suddenly a $50k shipping container home looks really appealing. But that's ignoring two things - one, the costs that are not included in that $50k, and two, that you're comparing a projection to reality. Compare apples to apples, and you'll realize that a stick-built kit for several hundred square feet can be had for $29k: https://allwoodoutlet.com/LARGE-CABIN-KITS/Allwood-Avalon-540-SQF-Kit-Cabin-FREE-SHIPPING-Financing-available https://allwoodoutlet.com/LARGE-CABIN-KITS/Allwood-Avalon-54...

315 points by zoshi 5y ago

In all of these demos, they never show you the resulting bathroom, shower, or kitchen. It's always "here's a shell we made". I'd like to see the finished house, with fixtures in place and working.

varjag 5y ago
While am generally a 3d printing skeptic I feel it's not quite a fair take. The bulk of a house (and its major cost component) is the structure. So this could be useful even if it can't print you the bathroom and the fridge. How well it going to work in practice is another matter (and here's where am skeptical).
- kube-system 5y ago
  The structure also has to accommodate those features. They’re not wholly independent.
  - dcolkitt 5y ago
    With pex plumbing and high velocity HVAC, you only need to run small, flexible tubes through the framing. It should be relatively easy to print small, flexible holes for tubing. Agree that traditional ductwork and copper pipping would be hard to accommodate.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      Drainage is the hard part. The pipes are larger and require you to cooperate with gravity.
      - JAlexoid 5y ago
        Sewage is absolutely NOT a problem for a single story houses. No large sewage pipes are installed in the walls of all single story houses.
        kube-system 5y ago
        Sometimes they are. My house is single story and has sewage pipes in the walls. Regardless of whether that is a requirement, the pipes have to go through some part of the structure to get to the outside, regardless of whether that's a wall, floor, foundation, etc.
        throwaway316943 5y ago
        It’s possible but only done for convenience where it makes sense to, not a requirement for new construction since you just put the pipes in before the pad gets poured.
        throwawayboise 5y ago
        Yes but GP said large pipes, e.g. for a toilet or the main pipe that connects to the municipal sewer. In a single-story house these would be under the floor. Pipes in the walls of a single-story house would be sink drains or vent pipes, and are narrower.
        quickthrowman 5y ago
        Your toilet pipes are inside a wall? That’s pretty strange, toilet drain pipe is usually 3” dia. Are there 90 degree bends? I don’t understand how or why you’d put a toilet drain pipe in a wall when the drain pipe is in the middle of a bathroom floor, not in a wall. Are you sure you aren’t thinking of sink drains?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- dagw 5y ago
  The bulk of a house (and its major cost component) is the structure Using current pre-fab techniques a half dozen builders can raise the core structure of a single family house in a few days. A friend of mine is in the process of building a house and raising the core structure was the fastest and easiest part of the whole process. I don't see this being either cheaper or faster. The bulk of the cost in many cases is things independent of the actual house, like purchasing the land, doing the ground work and the foundations and pulling in water and sewage.
  - mrfusion 5y ago
    Well lumbar is expensive too now.
    - canadianfella 5y ago
      Lumber
    - dagw 5y ago
      True. The question is if that is just a temporary thing or the new normal. I suspect prices will be back to 'normal' in a year
      - karlerss 5y ago
        There was a deep dive about this in Bloomberg Odd Lots podcast. Although some of the price increase was due to the industry predicting lower demand and getting rid of inventory. Another, more fundamental factor is the actual scarcity of lumber due to lower harvesting quotas set by Canadian govt. These quotas are unlikely to go up any time soon.
        throwaway316943 5y ago
        They aren’t going to maintain a 3x increase in price though. If they do we’re going to see a lot of new sawmills starting up.
  - 5y ago
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  Absolutely not true. This is often referred to as the 'envelope' in construction and its not the majority of the cost of overall construction (or wasnt before the current outrageous lumber prices)
- mnouquet 5y ago
  > The bulk of a house (and its major cost component) is the structure That's blatantly false, the structure is the easy part.
00jimbo 5y ago
they show you the kitchen and a shot of the bathroom sink in these pictures, actually. it's just so minimalist that it's not that obvious. not quite to my taste but that's in part because they just want to show off the building itself. really, though, you can finish them like any other house; there's nothing special about the kitchen, bathroom, or walls that precludes it. aside from the striping, i imagine there's not that much different about building internal structures into a house like this than there is into more traditional rammed earth housing.
- 0df8dkdf 5y ago
  What about plumbing and water resistance to humidity in the bathroom?
  - laumars 5y ago
    The problem is the same irrespective of how the house is built. You need holes for pipes and holes for an extractor fan. The bonus here is that 3D printed surfaces mean you don’t need to drill out material to make the holes.
mft_ 5y ago
Not sure that fitting a bathroom or kitchen is the difficult part of the concept, though. It reminds me a little of an old Grand Designs episode. [0] Different, in that (AFAICT) the 3D-printed house isn't designed to have high thermal mass (the 'earthship' concept) but it gives an idea how a fully-functional house can be crafted from a lot of earth and work quite well. [0] https://www.granddesignsmagazine.com/grand-designs-houses/977-inside-the-grand-designs-earthship-house https://www.granddesignsmagazine.com/grand-designs-houses/97...
- nunb 5y ago
  When you mentioned Grand Designs, I was expecting a link to the FACIT [0] house! I suppose that's CNC or cutting/routing based though... [0] https://vimeo.com/53932758 https://vimeo.com/53932758
  - kbenson 5y ago
    I have to say, it's an interesting design. I have my reservations about portions of it though. Insulation of recycled newspaper makes me very uncomfortable with the idea of what happens if it catches fire. That said, it's just one small aspect of the whole I'm uneasy with so far (but I haven't watched it all).
dcolkitt 5y ago
Modern bathroom pods are very easy to install and come in pre-configured sizes. They're literally just plug and play. After that, the only challenge is making sure you have plumbing connections at the bathroom and kitchen sites. But modern pex plumbing makes that pretty easy. You're just running flexible rubber tubes from the multiplexer. In this sort of design, I'd imagine you can just pre-print the holes for the tubes, or punch through where needed.
- ogre_codes 5y ago
  Modern houses are very easy to install and come in preconfigured shapes. They ship flat packed components and drop them on site for low skilled workers to build. They include things like bathrooms and kitchens as part of the build.
- coding123 5y ago
  Pex does nothing for sewer water however.
dredmorbius 5y ago
There are a few shots showing the floorplan and utilities. This illustrates the bath and kitchen areas. Looks as if there's a cooktop but no oven. The bath includes a sink, shower, and WC. https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2021/02/a-3d-printed-global-housing-community-is-being-constructed-in-italy-for-sustainable-living/15-tecla_yankodesign.jpg https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2021/02/a-3d-...

barry27 5y ago

Does it have plumbing? Wiring? Or did they 3D print a shelter.

DougN7 5y ago

Would this survive a rain storm or would it turn to mud? I couldn’t tell from the article.

idiotsecant 5y ago
It would pretty quickly erode away. I think that's why they've built it in a desert. Don't have to worry about rain if there is no rain!
- p_l 5y ago
  It's in Ravenna, that's not a desert. The material used probably involves some form of binder, rammed earth is also an option but it doesn't look like rammed earth from the photos.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  Rain can be torrential in the desert.
deckar01 5y ago
> The collaboration between MC A and WASP has been supported by Mapei, a worldwide producer of construction materials, which has studied the clay materials and identified the key components within the raw earth mixture to create the final highly optimised printable product. https://www.3dwasp.com/en/3d-printed-house-tecla/ https://www.3dwasp.com/en/3d-printed-house-tecla/ I think its safe to assume that the raw clay has been processed into a material more suitable for masonry.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  It says that it's been optimized to be printable, not for longevity or other characteristics needed in construction. What are the tradeoffs?
  - laumars 5y ago
    I would imagine if this house isn’t strong then future designs would be. Bricks and coffee mugs are also made out of clay so it’s not like we don’t already have a long history of experience working with the substance to create durable materials.

LinuxBender 5y ago

I like the idea. Have these been put through stress tests? i.e. Wind tunnels, simulated forest fire, floods, earthquake, cold / hot weather, powder actuated projectiles and how do they compare to traditional wooden framed or steel framed homes? What is the thermal insulation rating? I would expect thermals to be pretty good. I've seen similar designs using aircrete [1] and those are fire-resistant. How strong is this compared to aircrete? [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VcdwDRNPzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VcdwDRNPzA

adriancr 5y ago
I assume it has the same longevity as things built out of mudbricks...
- sneak 5y ago
  So, it's going to have to switch to a subscription model eventually to continue to exist?
  - abdullahkhalids 5y ago
    In my country, some poor people (unfortunately) live in mud houses. They periodically add a new layer of mud, as the old layers get eroded away. I imagine, this could be done by a robot for this 3D structure. Of course, this depends on house not collapsing under heavy rain.
    - adriancr 5y ago
      or critters digging through walls and into your house
    - sneak 5y ago
      Creative Ground.
  - bogwog 5y ago
    gotem

frankbreetz 5y ago

Cool idea, the lack of discussion of longevity seems pretty glaring. While we would all love to not cause any stress on the environment, we also have to live though heavy rains, snow, and wind. Maybe this structure is designed for dry environment and can with stand a couple of rains a year. >>The architect studied how a building’s shape could impact its efficiency, in relation to its climate and latitude. hopefully someone also studied materials the house is made of, because that seems pretty important. Dirt is a very good insulator of both heat and sound, so maybe they could build something like this a put some sort of shell around it, like siding on current houses, to protect it from weather.

twobitshifter 5y ago
Disposable housing is common in some cultures who value new construction. Having a house naturally erode is better than what happens in Japan for example: [...] the value of the average Japanese house depreciates to zero in 22 years. (It is calculated separately from the land, which is more likely to hold its value.) Most are knocked down and rebuilt. Sales of new homes far outstrip those of used ones, which usually change hands in the expectation that they will be demolished and replaced. In America and Europe second-hand houses accounted for 90% of sales and new-builds for 10% in 2017. In Japan the proportions are the other way around. — The Economist
dakna 5y ago
> Dirt is a very good insulator of both heat and sound Sound yes, heat not so much. While it can store heat due to it's thermal mass, it will release it quickly due to a low R-value, depending on moisture content the R-value could be below 1 per inch. Cellulose has around 3.5 per inch. Without adding additional insulation to restrict thermal transfer, you need to build very thick walls. In sunny desert climates where days are hot and nights are cold, you can build your wall in a way that allows it to go through the heat exchange synced with the 24hr sun cycle, and then it's very efficient. Thinner cob walls need to be wrapped with insulation to slow down heat transfer.
- goda90 5y ago
  From the looks of the video and pictures, they are going with pretty thick walls, and lots of air pockets. The dirt itself might not be the best insulator, but I think the whole wall would do well.

Oktokolo 5y ago

Looks, like they where real careful to not include any technical detail that would explain, how they manage to get that buildings stable and rain proof... Probably bullshit.

ISL 5y ago

How well do structures like these perform in earthquakes? I can imagine that they might outperform some masonry but be inferior to modern stick-built?

reversengineer 5y ago

Excellent idea as a proof of concept, and even beautiful in design. However one cannot help but wonder how structurally sound these materials are. Stress tests are needed to determine how well this would hold up over years of exposure to the elements before being produced en masse. For a sustainable alternative, homes made from repurposed shipping containers are a cost-effective solution for housing. They are made of weather-resistant Steel which, while not rust-proof, will not rot. A single unit can be kitted out and furnished for as little as $25,000, and yields 300+ square feet of space, comparable to a smaller studio apartment. Check out the YouTube Channel "Containing Luxury" which illustrates the sustainability of Container Homes and demonstrates them as a solution to several housing issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_sclvzg9dM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_sclvzg9dM

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
I don't understand why people think shipping containers are a good idea for housing. They were never designed for this and will always be compromised when you come to put windows, doors, insulation and services in them.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  I guess because a shipping container is rectangular and that a house can be rectangular. This wasn't a bad series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA5fh29rhLs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA5fh29rhLs Put me in the 'shipping containers make shitty houses' camp.
  - hindsightbias 5y ago
    I love that they wood frame the interiors for insulation and walls. Could have just built a wood frame house. Quicker, faster and more roomy.
    - saalweachter 5y ago
      $80 / square foot is, like, cheap, but I'm not sure I would really call it amazingly cheap.

3dee 5y ago

It seems to be a mixture of clay, salt, rice fibers and lime. So I guess the lime prevents erosion.

RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
Mineralization. Effectively turns the aggregate into a kind of concrete. I would put a significant bet down that the energy cost of the lime is not accounted for in their 6kwh calculation.

alexvoda 5y ago

It looks like sea urchins.

ramboldio 5y ago

Stunning Aesthetics and sustainability characteristics. Unsure whether it is a contender of factory-built prefab homes when it comes to affordability & speed. 30 story building build in 15 days - prefabricated skyscraper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajlUVSiUvWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajlUVSiUvWg

noughtme 5y ago

You might be more familiar with Mapei, the company that developed the material, TECLA. They are tight lipped about the actual ingredients and chemistry, but it seems to rely on soil that naturally contains cement or lime. The structure also requires a spray applied coating to ensure waterproofness. https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/finally-credible-prototype-sustainable-3d-printed-housing/ https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/finally-credible-p...

bilbo0s 5y ago
Just a nit-pick, but the spray applicants generally render earthen buildings moisture resistant, not waterproof. You generally use the old tried and true methods to handle moisture, water and rain. "Good hat. Good boots." Well coordinating landscaping. And appropriate interior ventilation in critical areas.
- noughtme 5y ago
  Yes and no. Having worked in building construction, both classes of coatings would have relevant applications. I was going to complain that Mapei has not released any technical details, but it appears they have: https://www.mapei.com/it/en/news-and-events/event-detail/2019/11/04/mapei-research-and-technology-for-tecla https://www.mapei.com/it/en/news-and-events/event-detail/201... However, that their "water-repellent" provides "waterproofing" does not clear things up.
  - Animats 5y ago
    The actual products that make it work: Mapesoil 10.[1] "High-performance, fibre-reinforced powdered stabilising agent for sports sub-base contruction surfaces".The amount of Mapesoil 10 required is 3%-5% of the dirt weight. Comes in 500kg bags, on pallets. Dynamon SR4 [2] "Superplasticizer based on acrylic polymer for concrete with long slump retention". About 1%-2% of the mix. That gets the material through the 3D printer without clogging. Planicrete [3] "Synthetic-rubber latex to improve the adhesion of cement mixes". About 2% of the mix. That helps each layer adhere to the previous layers, the usual problem with 3D printing. These are all standard additives for concrete. There's also a waterproofing agent sprayed on afterwards. The same materials would probably work with concrete forms. Plus, then you could do tamping. The trouble with most of these 3D building systems is that there's no tamping or ramming to solidify the material. It's just squirted on like toothpaste. So problems with voids and leakage are to be expected. All this requires the right dirt. Probably something with a high clay content. Too much sand or too much topsoil and it probably won't become hard enough. As with rammed earth construction [4] this may not hold up in wet climates. [1] https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-documents/5904_mapesoil100_gb.pdf https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-... [2] https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-documents/688_dynamonsr4_gb.pdf https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-... [3] https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-documents/701-planicrete-gb.pdf https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-... [4] https://www.firstinarchitecture.co.uk/rammed-earth-construction/ https://www.firstinarchitecture.co.uk/rammed-earth-construct...

cheschire 5y ago

I hope 3D printing homes will take off now that lumber prices are so ridiculous. The sudden cost increases in other materials will now hopefully give 3d printing space to achieve economies of scale. Imagine homes that are printed with a 20 year life expectancy. Especially in America where I don't know many families that remain in the same house for 20 years. We could start going to the Japanese model of razing the house as an expected part of the land purchase. This has the added benefit of making it significantly easier to keep houses up to modern code.

rootusrootus 5y ago
I think that's the first time I've heard of someone considering the Japanese home ownership model aspirational. Isn't that also where the 100 year mortgage idea started? I'd rather see that we built really solid houses that are fundamentally designed for ease of renovation, rather than routinely raze and rebuild from scratch. Code improves over time but not on a timescale that makes 20-year rebuilds sensible.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  Unfortunately a lot of the rebuilds happens because of dramatic code changes. Houses built just 5 years ago will often be illegal to build again. Only way to bring it up to code is total remodel or worse tear down.
  - mikeg8 5y ago
    This is an extremely exaggerated take. Again, the building codes do not upgrade on that fast of a time scale and even if a house is technically not up to code, they are grandfathered in based on the time they were built. A house that was built 10, 20, even 30 years ago, is still totally fine to live in, even if not up to the most current codes.
    - Logon90 5y ago
      This tells you everything you need to know about the current codes.

travisporter 5y ago

Domes are ubiquitous throughout sci-fi. Why don't we have a competition to, say print domes or homes autonomously in antarctica or sahara?

bluGill 5y ago
Because domes are a terrible shape for humans. You can't hang pictures on the walls - the curve makes weird things happen. Likewise your furniture can't be against the wall it must be out to account for the curve. Domes look cool, so of course fiction is full of them. They are not impossible to build so a few people have built them. They are not a good shape though, so they won't catch on.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  Right. They're impractical and a poor use of space. Also, it constrains how much of the space is walkable without bumping your head into the wall/ceiling. It's like living in an attic.

epx 5y ago

Remembers the Terrafoam of Mannah short story. Hope it is not a sign…

mushbino 5y ago

To really solve the housing crisis we'll need to use this device to print some affordable land first.

doh 5y ago
There is plenty of land, just not in desirable locations. But if you could build infrastructure easily and with speed, maybe those locations can be transformed too. Up until last 40 years ago people didn't want to live on the ocean. Now they can't get enough. US has a huge swaths of land empty, especially in the Pacific Northwest.
- wing-_-nuts 5y ago
  >Up until last 40 years ago people didn't want to live on the ocean. Now they can't get enough. US has a huge swaths of land empty, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Can you expand on this please? What do you mean by 'people didn't want to live on the ocean' and also, what do you mean by 'vast swaths of empty land in the PNW'. Are you talking east of the cascades? I don't think there is a whole lot of land there with an oceanic climate?
  - doh 5y ago
    > What do you mean by 'people didn't want to live on the ocean' I remember Arnold Schwarzenegger being confused why "nobody" wanted to live in Santa Monica or Venice Beach to a point that the government was subsidizing it to attract people. For instance north of San Diego there are old apartment buildings on the water that have only window facing the ocean in their bathroom. Historically ocean was considered as a hassle. You have to deal with the salty air that breaks down many material quite swiftly. In Turkey, fathers would give the prime land to their sons (pastures) and the crap land to their daughters (ocean fronts). How the world changed. > what do you mean by 'vast swaths of empty land in the PNW' If you go anywhere outside of the majors settlements there are major swaths of empty land which is fairly cheap, but there is no infrastructure there and people don't want to be the city founders anymore.

blitz_skull 5y ago

> needed no materials to be transported to the site Has glass doors... To be sure, this is really cool—breakthrough even. But the headlines are just factually inaccurate.

surgeryres 5y ago

Yet another example of the over-hype of “3D Printing”. Yes it’s neat that they collected some local dirt, mixed it with some non-locally sourced water and binder, and poured it into an extruder run on some kind of non locally sourced energy, then sprayed it with some protective coating - it baffles me that people see this as a possible mainstream building technique. Running electrical, plumbing, air conditioning etc through this structure is doable but much harder, as the expectations of these niceties have evolved with modern construction and need easy access and hiding with things like dry wall. This almost reads as an onion article with the headline “brilliant scientists figure out how to overcomplicate the construction of mud huts similar to our earliest human ancestors”.

ed25519FUUU 5y ago
And this technique really wouldn’t work well in impoverished places where people need shelter. It works well when there’s a lot of local technology but not a lot of labor, precisely the opposite working conditions in much of Africa.
kingsuper20 5y ago
Exactly. God knows how many concepts I've seen for mixing local soils with magic powder and (typically) forming up walls. I do like that these guys could make rather free-form structures, but building an envelope is straightforward and runs into the issues of actually using the thing (seismic&water issues, installation of utilities, insulation, HVAC, longevity, insurance). It's pretty hard to beat traditional methods and anything new typically has to be measurably quite a lot better. If a person wanted to drive down costs, I'd probably tend more towards larger prefab components. Maybe it's not so different from software in these areas.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  You bring up a good point. I have yet to see anyone construct some of these structures on a shake table and report the resultant data. I wouldn't look for unreasonably good performance, but I wonder how it would perform against, for instance, modern rammed earth structures? If any engineers out there have links to tests or studies please do post them.

intrasight 5y ago

Is beautiful!

55555 5y ago

I thought this was going to be about... bricks. Houses are traditionally made from earth.

bobthechef 5y ago
Not in the US. Americans prefer living in cardboard boxes. I mean, timber frame and drywall palaces.
- kube-system 5y ago
  You mean affordable structures made out of renewables and built to the latest safety and efficiency standards? I always feel like this sentiment sounds like nostalgia some express about the "sturdy" cars of the 60's. Sure, you can hit them with a hammer without a dent, but the engineering is crap.
  - mnouquet 5y ago
    The modern car's engineering of modern car might be astonishing, but at this point there is so much disposable parts that I question their environmental friendliness...
    - kube-system 5y ago
      Like what? Modern maintenance intervals are way longer than in the past, and vehicles today are way more reliable and last longer in general.
      - mnouquet 5y ago
        Reliance on non-repairable electronics everywhere, fully sealed mechanical parts, etc. Efficiency comes at the cost of more moving parts, more sensors, higher pressure, tighter tolerances, which all introduces more failure points harder to debug/replace. Not to mention lighter thinner non-cost prohibitive materials are easier to damage. As a rule of thumb, I will only buy pre-2008 vehicles, things only went from bad to worst after that era.

mbgerring 5y ago

Every one of these obnoxious mud huts I’ve ever seen are single story, on like 10 acres of land, in a car-dependent rural area. More people living like this would worsen every current issue we face with environmental sustainability.

flatline 5y ago
Good luck trying to get permits to build anything the slightest bit unconventional in any populated area. I looked at building a geodesic dome, and was going to end up in the boonies and likely still paying off the inspector to pull permits. You could get it done in town and it would have to be over-built, completely ruining the whole efficiency angle of the dome to begin with, and taking months or years to work through the process.
- bruiseralmighty 5y ago
  Yeah basically this. Trying to build an eco-structure or even a mostly earthen home in the US you are basically relegated to a sparsely populated counties or taking your chances squatting on Federal land. This was quite eye-opening to me once I had to actually attempt to find some land to build on.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    For good reason - most of these things don't have good engineering behind them. Standard stick frame construction has good insulation values (dirt/clay/mud/cement does not), holds up to weather, earthquakes, and has reasonable fire protection (it burns but in known amounts). This is all backed up by a lot of engineering data that doesn't exist for most alternatives, they might be better, but nobody has actually run all the angles to be sure.
    - bruiseralmighty 5y ago
      I don't disagree with you actually. I believe that building codes generally keep us safer and create a better standard of house. Most people don't want to become test subjects for an experimental technology. My point is just that the current building codes necessitate experimenting away from more developed areas in order to innovate and that this should not be held against examples of construction innovation. After having had to search for land I would say that I feel that building codes are perhaps not overly restrictive, but too ubiquitous. Most experimentation and innovation can only happen on small patches of remote scrubland with poor soil, deep ground water, and limited access to the internet. It would be nice if some of these projects could take place 15 minutes out of a mid-sized town rather than 40 minutes to an hour. I can see the value in enforcement within a city's limits, but we could get faster building innovation if counties and states were laxer with building codes on their unincorporated land.

nanna 5y ago

Lots of unfair negativity here. I think this is wonderful. HN is full of random hacked-up tech that will never solve the worlds problems but nonetheless give a glimpse at what alternatives could look like. Experiments. This is what this is, and in my opinion it's stunning and I would move into one in an instant.

judge2020 5y ago
HN worries about the hard problems because they're real challenges that need to be solved before any improvements reach the wider market.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  Nonsense. HN worries (enjoys, rather) problems that appeal to them. Linux running on a pen. A new programming framework demonstrates an abstract point. Etc. What HN is doing here is internalizing cliches, responding to hyperbole/tropes they (we) assume is in the article. Also, the artsy-philosphical terms used by architects pisses off nerds. "Humane Architecture" and whatnot. This is HN being silly, not HN being smart. We do both here. Meanwhile, how is transporting materials vs equipment a Hard Problem?
  - brudgers 5y ago
    Doom running on an HP printer is interesting because it is clever and because being clever was reason enough to do it. This isn’t clever. It is a string of tech buzzwords washed with green buzzwords. Or to put it another way nobody really cares how their house is built. The PHP of construction materials and methods is just as good for just about everyone because what mostly matters is location. The advantage of materials is the ability to stockpile. Their higher degree of asynchronisity. It is possible to maintain an inventory of prefabricated components. An on-site machine has vast temporal dependencies. And the most common word in construction might be “delayed”...at least it can feel that way at times. And no place is more full of surprises than what is underground.
  - jack_riminton 5y ago

SeanFerree 5y ago

Very cool!

101001001001 5y ago

You can take soil and mix it with a little sand and cement and compress it into a brick. It’s called earth blocks. It’s interesting to consider how cheaply one could build structures if they are mostly dirt.

m0llusk 5y ago

It seems strange that there is so much focus on 3D printing structures. Any close look at where the costs go in home construction can easily verify that foundations and services (power, water, sewage) are where the majority of the costs are. It always makes sense to pinch pennies, but starting with one of the smallest line items limits potential improvement. What we really need are ongoing improvements to modular service installations. This is also a complex cultural problem here as well because even though there are obvious ways of making even comparisons such as time and money spent before receiving a use permit the culture of construction likes to focus on a single innovation while leaving the rest out. There is a modular apartment building near me that took only hours to assemble from the component modules. However, doing that took many months of site preparation and module delivery and after the several hours construction it has still been months to get finishing done, construct sidewalks, and the rest. Without some general agreement about how to measure construction costs and time it is easy to present innovations that are either minor improvements or actually steps backward.

mdorazio 5y ago
Yup. Foundation, services, and interiors are your big line items. The shell tends to be both cheap and very quick to build with common materials.
elihu 5y ago
It seems like installing electrical and plumbing could be a lot easier if a 3D printed building was constructed with all the necessary channels for utilities already there in the walls, and all you have to do is feed wires and pipes through the routes and connect everything. Similarly, finish work is simpler if you don't have to put sheet rock up, and can just use the existing wall texture. I think the bigger advantage to 3D printed architecture, though, is that you can make drastic changes to the design of a building without having to consider whether a contractor with the necessary skills is available to do the work or spend any effort trying to communicate the design to another human. For example, if I'm an architect and my client wants their living room to look like a gothic cathedral, I could design their living room to look like a gothic cathedral without having to worry about whether I can find a builder who knows how to construct a vaulted arch ceiling. I'd just have to make sure it's within the capabilities of the construction machine and conforms to structural requirements. That opens up a lot of possibilities, especially when it comes to organic shapes, curves, and non-right-angles.

whall6 5y ago

I want a dirt house

williesleg 5y ago

That's the guy on youtube that builds the mansions with swimming pools with a knife and a stick, right?

ChucklesNorris 5y ago

Unfortunately, it's susceptible to a big bad wolf attack.

tdhz77 5y ago

Looks like LUKE SKYWALKER was born here.

mort1merp0 5y ago

I don't quite understand what they mean by the term “humane” architecture. I see that is has low carbon footprint, is made of local materials. But is that what they are defining as "humane" architecture?

ratsforhorses 5y ago
I suppose one might consider the aspect that with ciment a lot of sand is used, which is a bane on the rivers (in Africa) causing terrible devastation... beyond that just the back breaking work of building a home ...seems much more "humane" if done by these methods...

Gibbon1 5y ago

The pictures reminds me of my uncle. He was a VP in charge of the companies real estate holdings. What he said about dealing with architects. 'That's nice but I was thinking of something... square. I'm into right angles'

29athrowaway 5y ago

If you like this, look up "superadobe".

mkaic 5y ago

This is superb. Obviously it's just a tech demo, but I'm optimistic for 3D printed houses in general in the near future. Exciting stuff!

ChucklesNorris 5y ago

Unfortunately, it's susceptible to the big bad wolf.

suyash 5y ago

Actually this might be the first house fully 3D printed by IIT Students in India https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/iit-madras-startup-builds-indias-first-3d-printed-house/articleshow/82276447.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/iit-madras-...

freetime2 5y ago
The "from raw earth" part is what makes the parent a first. The house in your link is "India's first". Both houses look very cool to me!

xyst 5y ago

construction workers about to be automated out

trilinearnz 5y ago

My first thought was "Yeah, but I bet it's not really printed, just transported printed prefabs to the site". Nope, it's actually printed on-site! Second thought is that the interior looks very Star Trek / Star Wars like. Some confirmation of the non-leakiness of the walls would be good, but otherwise looks extremely promising as a concept.

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gimmeThaBeet 5y ago

I see that WASP stands for World's Advanced Saving project, but I did have a bit of a chuckle thinking if they wanted to call it VESPA, but that was taken already. Very cool looking structure.

Black101 5y ago

I have seen 3D printed homes before... raw earth is a lot misleading though

breck 5y ago

Wow. This feels like a big deal. Like, 3D printed homes could noticeably change our world in the next 10-30 years. That hadn't really clicked for me until seeing this. Pretty amazing work.

swayvil 5y ago

That's a nice tech. I'd rather have yr basic optimal hemieggoid tho. Too Rococo. That looks like good substrate for some kind of fat polymer coating. Needs windows. How does it stand up to the wet?

maliker 5y ago

This brought to mind opensourceecology.org, which was going some work with compressed earth brick buildings. They were getting a lot of attention five or so years ago. Good to see they’re still working towards their goal and are in good company.

Tiereven 5y ago

From a housing aspect, the actual project is a nice, architecturally interesting piece of art. But conceptually it could be a remarkable milestone. Has this project any relation to similar off-earth construction research? Could the methods here be extended to lunar regolith or martian soil? What development is still needed before this can become fully autonomous and able to build many structures before requiring service or additional additives?

varispeed 5y ago

Building a house was never a problem and the huge costs are mostly artificial. The biggest problem is regulation and that you need to have a lot of money to convince local authority to grant a permission to build. It is out of reach for a regular citizen. You can't even build a mud hut without a blessing of a civil servant, and they hate when regular people want to build something as they don't have means to grease their hands.

CuriouslyC 5y ago
Unless you live in parts of Tennessee or Idaho where codes are not enforced.
oblio 5y ago
That's partially true. But, if you build a house and it collapses on top of you, who's responsible? Who pays for your medical expenses? Even worse, if the house collapses and it falls on top of your guests, who's responsible? Who pays for everyone's medical expenses? That's just one random example, there are many ways a house can fail.

owenversteeg 5y ago

The interesting thing with all these alternative construction methods is that they end up having much larger costs in one way or another. I'm a huge fan of "alternative living" (lived in a boat I built myself for years) but even I can't convince myself to build a home with one of these alternative methods (shipping container, 3D printing, compressed earth block, adobe, wattle and daub, concrete block, etc.) First there's the permitting process. Then there's the construction costs. Then there's the safety aspect (many of these homes are a disaster with earthquakes/fire/water issues.) An underappreciated thing is how easy having straight walls makes construction. Having lived in a boat with curved walls, I would never consider a land home with curved walls. The beauty of the curve does NOT make it worth it, unless you plan to hire someone at great expense to do all the work for you. Yes, it's that bad, your 4 day cabinet project will become 4 weeks in no time. Instead of being able to simply plop in premade components (windows, benches, cabinets, beds, etc etc) you'll now need to custom build absolutely everything. Even the parts that seem simple are not. Laying flooring in a square room is simple enough. In a small curved room, you'll have to cut a ton of pieces with a strange curve. Then you have to lay them to meet up with the curved walls. It's a nightmare. You're also negating part of the eco-friendly aspect, by the way, when you have to discard huge amounts of curvy pieces of material (trust me, you'll cut large pieces wrong more than a few times.) That's one reason why I find this 3D printing clay project quite cool - you can simply 3D print benches, cabinets, walls etc to nestle right up to the curve. I'd be very curious to hear from anyone here who tried to save money while building a home, but I would suspect that the answer is to go small and minimize labor. Even minimizing labor, you're going to need permits, a foundation, electrical, HVAC, a roof, etc, so it's not going to be nearly as cheap as you think. If anyone is interested in a good cost breakdown of house construction costs, I like this one: https://www.nahbclassic.org/generic.aspx?sectionID=734&genericContentID=271883&channelID=311 https://www.nahbclassic.org/generic.aspx?sectionID=734&gener... You'll notice that the sum total of framing + exterior finishes (framing, exterior wall finishes, roof, windows and doors, etc) come out to around 30% of the construction cost of a new home, or around 18.5% of the total cost of a new home. So this machine can save you at maximum 30% of the construction cost. The rest is pretty much fixed: landscaping+deck+driveway = 6.8%, interior finishing = 25.4%, plumbing/electrical/HVAC = 15%, foundation = 12%, permits/sewer/fees = 6%. Which gets to my last point: the issue with technologies like these is that people compare their best-case projections for one part of the system to the total costs of the existing solution (traditional stick built construction) in the same way people make arguments for Gadgetbahn type projects. You see that the average new single family home costs $485k and suddenly a $50k shipping container home looks really appealing. But that's ignoring two things - one, the costs that are not included in that $50k, and two, that you're comparing a projection to reality. Compare apples to apples, and you'll realize that a stick-built kit for several hundred square feet can be had for $29k: https://allwoodoutlet.com/LARGE-CABIN-KITS/Allwood-Avalon-540-SQF-Kit-Cabin-FREE-SHIPPING-Financing-available https://allwoodoutlet.com/LARGE-CABIN-KITS/Allwood-Avalon-54...