Intro
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking after reading the title of this blog post: “How could an entire house be built merely from 3D printing?” I was pretty shocked to learn that this house even existed, so I decided to dive a bit deeper into my home design interest and share it with the class. Also, since AI is taking over literally almost every conversation in the technology/innovation space, I thought it would be cool to talk about something where the hype has died down: 3D printing. Specifically, 3D printing regarding design and sustainability.
(Shoutout to our guest speaker a few weeks back, Andy. I enjoyed his talk on sustainability and wanted to focus my blog post on something of the sort 🙂 )
Okay so… what are the details of this house? Let’s play House Hunters.
Located in East Austin, this house is nothing short of beautiful. As stated on Iconbuild’s website, this house is a “2,000+ sqft, 3 bedroom/2.5 bath home”. Although this may seem like a pretty average house, it’s far from that as all of the walls are made from a 3D printer, decreasing time, waste, costs, and the overall effort of building a house. The 3D walls allow for a thermal insulation layer and are inspired by the direct light of nature, causing the need for electrical lighting to decrease.
The house itself is a ranch house with lightly colored wood all around the house. The walls look and feel exactly like normal walls would. However, when it comes to structural tests, House Zero performs at an extremely high level and is able to take on any type of extreme weather and fires. Furthermore, the house has solar panels on the roof and high-efficiency appliances.
Overall, these homes can be built for under $99,000 and only take a week to be built (The Verge). This could completely change the housing industry (and the world) as we know it!
Below is a short video of the house itself:
How is this even a thing?
The printing of the walls is from a Vulcan 3D printer, which is a “high-tech construction printer…that is specifically designed and engineered with the mass production of 3D-printed single-story homes in mind” (NewAtlas). The printer can make up to 10 inches of cement per second, greatly reducing construction times. However, for this to work, 4 people have to operate it through a tablet. Once the walls are constructed, home builders come in to finish the rest of the home, such as the roof and windows. Lastly, the interior design and furniture arrive at the home.
Attached below is a picture of the Vulcan 3D printer (which looks really high-tech, by the way!):
Attached is a video of the house being made from the 3D printer:
What are the benefits? What does this mean for sustainability?
As I stated previously, House Zero could greatly impact the housing, construction, design, and architectural industries. Traditional home construction is known to have various expensive costs, from attaining the materials to transporting them to the land. 3D printed houses allow for energy-efficient designs and less waste to be produced, as only the necessary amount of material is used in the construction process. And since the walls are made specifically from Lavacrete, the overall cost of insulation decreases, causing the carbon footprint to decrease as well. Furthermore, with 3D printing only advancing as time progresses, there will be more parts of the house that could be 3D built or made from sustainable materials/renewable resources. Yay for the earth!
Also, since I know we are all business majors and think about the costs of things since only 4 workers are needed to operate the printer, labor costs decrease significantly! And, architects, designers, and homeowners have more freedom to create custom-built features that would be difficult to achieve through traditional home construction methods.
The future.
As amazing as it is, House Zero is still taking reservations to get one of these homes (aka, there is literally a waitlist to get a house.) The parent company, Icon, has actually built about 100 of these homes and has made a neighborhood of them. It’ll definitely be interesting to see if any celebrities (or even, one of us) buy one of these homes in the near future. Along with plenty of architecture and sustainability awards, House Zero was featured on Time’s Best Inventions 2022. However, I’m going to leave it up to you all, would you live in a 3D home with its $450,000 price tag? Personally, I think these houses are gorgeous, and if I had the money, I would definitely get one to flex and also to help the earth!
P.S. If you are interested in seeing some of the houses that are currently listed, here is the link: https://www.iconbuild.com/homes/genesis-collection-at-wolf-ranch.