Could Your Next Home Be 3D Printed? Everything To Know About The Future Of Construction

While compact 3D printers have proliferated in the last few years with seemingly everyone able to create whatever they want at home, the technology has been around for a while. Some of the first patents for what would become 3D printers were filed in the '70s. Stereolithography, the method that makes 3D printing possible, was patented in 1984, and the first device to use it was created in 1987. It was in the '90s that advances in medical and industrial applications saw significant gains that would ultimately lead to widespread adoption. In 2006, the Makerbot arrived and set off a technology revolution in DIY 3D printing and the proliferation of the technology to everyone (via Redshift).

Since then, individuals and companies have been pushing the technology in new directions, figuring out ways to use new materials to create an ever-growing list of objects not possible without mass production just a decade before. This includes scaling up the printer to the size of a house. According to House Beautiful, Habitat for Humanity announced in January 2022 that the first owner-occupied house built with 3D printing will be available to a family in Virginia. Habitat, a charity that builds homes for low-income families, is energetic about the possibility of continuing to use 3D printing to help more families around the nation. Things are just beginning for the 3D printed home.

Building houses with a printer reduces not only the raw materials needed to create the structure but also the workers needed. The most strenuous part of the project is setting up the printer, which is a large and complex assembly. When it is set up and in place, the machine does most of the work with only a couple of workers to monitor the progress. Austin-based Icon is going all-in on 3D printed houses, having already built a 350 sq. ft. prototype house in Austin with its patented printing system. According to Insider, Icon says that their Austin house, which was built in 48 hours, cost about $10,000, but that they expect to be able to get it down to $4,000 going forward while increasing the size and reducing the building time.

On a larger scale, SQ4D of Long Island recently listed its first printed home for sale, per the Today Show. Situated on a quarter-acre lot on Long Island, the house is 1,400 sq. ft. with three bedrooms and a two-car garage. The listing was priced at just under $300,000, which is about half the usual price for the area. On its official website, SQ4D boasts of having completed the largest printed house to be listed for sale. This one is listed as a 2,000 sq. ft., four-bedroom, and two-bathroom home and only required 15 days to print. It appears that 3D-printed houses are poised to disrupt the market.

Home construction has a dramatic impact on the environment. From the clearing of forests for lumber to the carbon emissions from diesel and gas-powered equipment, construction has an ecological cost. 3D-printed homes help to reduce this by building from mostly sustainable concrete and consuming less fuel in the process, creating fewer emissions. 3D printing also produces a lot less waste, as building construction produces millions of tons of waste sent to landfills each year. While these benefits are real and tangible, they can get better by using all-natural or recycled materials.

Azure is a company looking for alternative ways to print new homes. Its process uses recycled plastic for its printer, and the source material is largely water bottles and food packaging. Rather than printing a home onsite, Azure is creating pre-fabricated pieces in its warehouse and shipping them for assembly on-site. Current offerings are for small structures meant as extra spaces to be placed in a backyard, but plans for complete dwellings are in the works (via Bob Vila).

Taking sustainability a step further, an Italian architect has created plans for printing structures using clay from natural materials nearby. A firm has already been contracted to implement the design and build test structures to prove the concept works (via My Modern Met). 3D printing alternatives are just now being explored and more innovative building materials are surely still to come.

Traditionally built homes often have a traditional look for good reasons. The materials available and the contractors experienced enough to build homes both work within well-established home designs. Creating avant-garde architecture is possible, but pricey. Using squares and rectangles and plenty of right angles makes homes easier and faster to construct and when curves and slants or other shapes enter the plans, costs rise dramatically. However, with a 3D printer, those constraints evaporate.

With a 3D printer, houses can be built in almost any shape or form you can imagine. Curves and odd angles for walls are no problem and take no more time than a big square. This leaves much room for the imagination of designers. Yanko Design writes about the broad array of designs created already, noting the unique attributes. It features a steel-printed bridge in Amsterdam featuring flowing shapes and repeating lattice on the sides; a cantilevered home of large box-like structures stacked to form a house in San Sebastian, Spain; and another Amsterdam project to build traditional-style canal houses from recycled plastic that has already begun construction. Arch Daily examines the unconstrained digital nature of the printing process that allows for dynamic design creations that can be plotted on computers long before any construction begins. The evidence of initial projects being completed around the globe is evidence that this construction method is viable and growing.

While the world of printing homes sounds very promising and many real-world benefits may be realized from this process, it is not perfect and a few roadblocks may arise. As with any new technology, there is a learning curve and the only way for the industry to sort things out is to risk the financial and time investment and dig into some projects.

For construction to begin, expensive machinery needs to be built or purchased. This significant investment, according to Utopia, can run close to a million dollars and investors can be gun-shy around unproven building processes. Adding to the investment risk can be the inconsistency of materials. Since many companies are testing and developing different methods, no single standard yet exists, and some trial and error is inherent to establishing 3D-printed homes as a mainstream concept. Lastly, pricing can be difficult largely due to the relatively small cost savings 3D homes currently offer. However, with more time and experience with this method, costs will be reduced, especially as the process scales up around the world.

With time, any or all of these issues can be overcome. We are just now seeing the first completed commercial housing projects using 3D printers and it is still relatively unknown in the public's mind. More work by intrepid startups along with media publicity outside of niche tech blogs and industry publications will help the benefits be realized by a wider group of homebuyers.

So far, the majority of projects that have received media publicity have been made of concrete or a proprietary material similar to concrete. However, recyclable plastics are also being studied and used and other materials are also in the works, including highly sustainable organic and biological ingredients.

The University of Maine has been at the forefront of printed housing research and operates a facility to explore this new technology. In November of 2022, WBUR reported that the university held a ribbon-cutting unveiling of its first completed home made of biodegradable material from industrial waste. Using the residual material leftover from sawmill operations where timber is processed into ready-to-use lumber combined with a binder made from corn, the University was able to 3D print a 600-square-foot house. The completed project resulted in a durable structure that used a printing process that allowed the printer to build the structure from floor to ceiling and traditional materials only needed to be used for the windows, doors, and other openings. Thanks to funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, progress is being made toward lowering the nationwide housing shortage with this technology.

[Featured image by Alfredo Milano via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 2.5]

As 3D-printed construction expands into new markets, more innovation is sure to find its way into 3D printing. Collaborations between engineers and architects and young upstart entrepreneurs are sure to bring fresh ideas to the table and further enhance the methods and materials used.

So far, the bulk of the work and innovation of this technology has concentrated on one or two-story single-family homes and small-scale multi-family dwellings. Some projects have also been instituted for public spaces mostly as functional art projects or expositions of the technology. However, some ideas are bubbling to the surface to expand printing to larger construction projects such as skyscrapers.

Cazza Technologies of Dubai announced in 2017, according to Futurism, that it will be building a 3D-printed skyscraper in the arid country, although no news appears to have surfaced since the announcement. Another project idea from a Malaysian architecture student is to build a skyscraper in which apartments can be individually printed as pods within a steel framework. Finally, MIT Technology Review reported that scientists have demonstrated 3D printing drones that could be dispatched as swarms using a unique lightweight cement. Tests have been successful on structures up to 2 meters, so much development will be needed for full-scale construction to begin. The 3D-printed building field is wide open and we are sure to see many clever ideas come to fruition in the near future.