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.
Great post! It’s amazing to see how 3D printing technology is revolutionizing the construction industry and contributing to sustainability efforts. I always randomly see some video on tik tok about that 3D printing concrete, but I guess i never really noticed it was House Zero that was responsible.
I never knew this was possible, but I am so intrigued. This innovation could revolutionize the housing market in the U.S. Owning a house could become more affordable for the average American. Not to mention the environmental benefits this invention could provide us. I think you did a great job including visuals in this post as well.
This is so interesting! I think if this method made housing more affordable, more environmentally friendly, and easier to build, it is a great idea. I would be curious to see if there were any issues when installing plumbing, heating, and decorations. I also wonder what would happen if it were to start raining in the middle of a print? I have heard of 3D printing houses before and think it would be so cool, but I still have a lot of questions. Are there other areas that could benefit from this technology before housing?
This is by far the most interesting blog I have read!! I grew up watching HGTV, so I have a strong interest in home construction and interior design. This absolutely blew my mind. I love that 3D-printed homes have better insulation, lower costs of material, are more sustainable, and look very futuristic and modern. If I had the money, I would love to buy one of these homes and build a life in it. I wonder if commercial areas would get involved in 3D printing construction in addition to residential areas. My only concern is how weather proof and strong a 3D printed home is against extreme weather conditions or natural disasters.
I saw an article about this a while ago while the technology was still in development. I’m glad to see that they are getting somewhere with the technology. I know that the technology is only limited to making 1-story ranch-style houses, but I think that could be because of stability concerns, and making anything taller would require some revisions to the design and foundation of the print. I have always been a fan of interesting architecture and designs on houses so I am excited to see how creative engineers and architects can be because of this technology. If this technology can recreate Arthur Erickson’s Graham House for much cheaper, I would pay whatever the asking price is (lol). To answer your question, I would not mind living in a 3-D printed house as long as it is built with enough craftsmanship to justify the half-million-dollar price tag.
Cool post. There was a whole stream of research about 20 years ago about how new Auto CAD technologies changed the design of buildings, which created new possibilities never before thought of. It seems that 3d printing could take this to the next level, where we end up with fundamentally different designs because of the construction methods available to us. Great post!
Hi Liah! This is a really good post! I would’ve never thought that 3D printing could do something like building houses with so much attention to the fact that the houses are safe from extreme conditions and also making the design of the house amazing. I hope this concept becomes more popular and grows quickly in a lot of locations. Construction takes a lot of time, and I’ve noticed that there has been construction in certain area for years for so many different reasons, so 3D printing will definitely help with that process. Great post!!
Fantastic post! I never even knew a house could be built off 3d materials and was surprised at how it can be built within a week, considering that it takes far longer to build a regular house. Houses like these would be perfect in certain parts of the country where fires and flooding are prone to happen. People are renting more now due to the rising cost of housing, so it will be interesting to see how this 3D-printed technology can help with that in the future. I would be interested in buying a home like this if there were some sort of tax incentive involved.
Wow this blog is very cool! I think I would totally pay that much to live in a 3d printed house. I feel like it will get cheaper as technology gets cheaper. Great post!
Hey Liah! Such an interesting post this week. My brother got me a 3D printer for Christmas, and I love printing out the most random things. I never would think it would be able to print out a house that is very cool. Its interesting to see that it takes only about a week to build these houses compared to the months it takes to build a house from scratch. I think the price tag is a little high and would love to see it become more affordable in the future to help third world countries maybe!
Hi Liah! I loved your blog post and thought it was really well written, you showed us a lot of really cool information and conveyed it in a really friendly and entertaining way! I also checked out the link and really liked the Genesis 05 [Ezra], I think, and seeing the inside of the house made me a lot less wary! I was worried they’d look really funky but besides the price tag, I would absolutely live in one of these now too I think! Excited to see what kind of foundation this kind of technology lays, badum tss
Hey Liah! I think this new way to build houses out of these materials is definitely something we have never seen before. This is very exciting considering the environmental benefits that are achieved, however if there is one of thing I could mention negatively with this. It would be the amount of jobs being lost in construction. Besides that, I believe this is an amazing achievement met in the technological world.
Hey liah love this post. This is really cool and i feel like the start of a potential new way of doing things. I saw something about 3D printers making a bridge while an AI designed it in real time, this could even be the future where design and construction are handled by technology. I wonder how successful these houses will be an if they will be viable soon.
Hi Liah! It’s amazing how 3D printing can revolutionize the construction industry and help make homes more sustainable. I also appreciate how you mentioned the potential cost savings and increased freedom for custom-built features. It’s exciting to see how technology can help us create better and more efficient solutions for our everyday needs.