Hard to tell, but it sounds like they're 3-D printing the building envelope, minus vapor barriers and whatnot. But nowadays the envelope is not the expensive part of a building, although it is the most visible. Plumbing, electrical, HVAC, floor finishing, decor, and so on accounts for most of the building cost. For some reason they aren't mentioned in the story, probably because nobody has a credible automation approach to them yet.
If you want to reduce the cost of the building envelope, possibly superadobe, shotcrete on airforms, ferrocrete, and flexible domes are better bets than 3-D printing of concrete. (The geodesic dome was conceived specifically as a solution to this problem, but I'm not convinced it actually does a good job at it.)
What's the current solution these things are competing with? Here in Argentina, the standard low-cost construction approach in the villas miserias is masonry with hollow bricks (18×33 cm), which cost 50¢. So a 6m×6m×3m building envelope requires about 1200 bricks, costing US$600 (AR$12000) if you buy them new instead of scavenging, plus some mortar and a corrugated-metal roof, which add a bit to the cost. It takes several days or even, at times, weeks to finish the construction; usually the family who live there build the house themselves, which is less of an opportunity cost than it sounds like with the unemployment rate as high as it is, especially among youth. Some families pour concrete slabs, others use dirt floors.
So, roughly speaking, this approach has to come down in cost by 10× to even compete with our current vernacular architecture, let alone improve on its pricing.
The concrete-3-D-printing approaches I've seen, like Andrey Rudenko's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ5Elbvvr1M, all share the drawback that they require a long time, because you have to wait for the lower layers of the construction to cure a bit before you can add more layers. Their big advantage is not that they're cheaper than pouring concrete into forms — although they may be, especially if you're building a large building or a dense construction — but that they have a lot of freedom of geometry.
Short of a radical change in how our society works, the only realistic solution to homelessness is going to have to be some kind of decent social housing. Maybe it will somehow be cheaply 3D-printed but the government is going to have to buy the land first. (That, or stop making it exclusive to the rich.) Access to land was the original problem here (since Enclosure Acts) and it has to be part of the solution.
You make some good points, the problem with 3D Printing houses, shotcrete and some of these other methods is that they cost less in the US where labor costs are high and more in 3rd world countries where labor costs are lower (at least for the types of homes things like this are trying to disrupt).
A really interesting alternative approach is earth bag building. It uses locally available dirt as a material and would generally work out to be even less than the brick building price you estimated.
> this approach has to come down in cost by 10× to even compete with our current vernacular architecture, let alone improve on its pricing.
I'd like to be wrong, but that seems like a kill shot to me. Not only does the new system need to be objectively competitive with the vernacular, but it needs to be so much better that it can overcome the myriad cultural and institutional inertias which have hitherto kept the vernacular locked in place.
Which is why this is a Hard Problem. I doubt that 3D printing alone can solve it. Would love to be pleasantly surprised, however.
Also, thrilled to see another superadobe shoutout on HN!
It is technically possible to do a very basic bungalow from prefab panels if you really really want to for under $1000 in a low income country.
This will be a much bigger change to people whose only other alternative is a carton box.
But I do not see this being a solution. Affordability of housing in developing nations is rarely comes as a number one issue, it is almost always comes after ruined economies, and disfunctional basic civic/municipal institutes: it is no use building those things in countries where a person will never ever earn even those USD $10k.
Prefab panel buildings simply beat every alternative for moderately comfortable, entry level housing from single family to low-rise.
If the goal is simply to transform a slum into something less of a slum. There are no better alternatives if any much big economy of scale be realized for the project.
Hi, this is Matthew, one of the cofounders at New Story (YC S15). We're the nonprofit developing this 3D printed home. I'd like to share why we decided to invest in an innovation like this and where we're headed. For context, in 3 years, we've built over 1,000 homes in 11 communities around the world through local partners.
The challenge we face is monumental; there are more than a billion people across the globe living without safe shelter. To make a dent in that number, our ability to scale up has to change.
Steady, linear improvements will never reach the total addressable market of families in need.
We believe R&D and product innovation is essential with a problem of this magnitude. We have to take big swings with forward-thinking technology to achieve a quantum leap in speed, affordability, and quality.
Our goal is to help power anyone building homes for the poor — governments and non-profits alike — to do their best work. As we make these strides, it means more families around the world will have safe shelter and can better actualize their potential.
We’re looking at a one billion person deficit of a basic human need. We believe maintaining the status quo is irresponsible — it’s terrifying to us — as it’ll never tackle this deficit. Our hypothesis today is that this breakthrough to reach more families can be achieved through robotics and 3D home printing.
A year ago, the technology we needed didn’t exist. That’s when we began working with ICON to create a solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem. The exciting result is “the Vulcan,” a 3D Home Printer designed to print a home for less than $4,000 in less than 24 hours. This robotic breakthrough delivers:
* Cost decrease (from $6,500/home to ~$4,000 and even lower future cost)
* Speed increase (from ~15 days to 12–24hrs to build one home)
* Improved quality and customization of the home unit for families
>By training local labor and buying locally sourced construction materials your donation not only builds a home, but it stimulates local economies and teaches skills in the process.
[1] Please consider also how the 24h are per home is also per machine/robot, if you assemble 15 teams of local builders you have exactly the same production
First of all, I really genuinely hope that you succeed. You're attacking a Hard Problem, and one that very much needs to be solved. That said: I'm fairly skeptical that your approach will work. Maybe you've seen an angle that I've haven't, so I ask this in a hopeful and constructive spirit: what differentiates you from other initiatives that I've seen fail to transform the world?
Two points of comparison.
First, the Hexayurt[1]. The inventor of the Hexayurt system is a good friend of mine. He created it to provide higher-quality shelter for the bottom billion, particularly in refugee camps. It is actually cheaper than a tent, not much harder to set up, and provides a far more durable and climate-controlled experience. Unfortunately, although it's made a fair impact at Burning Man, it has failed to take root in the context it was designed for. The gatekeepers at refugee camps don't want to provide housing which conveys a sense of permanence; therefore the tents have stayed even hough they're worse in every possible metric.
Second, the CalEarth Foundation's "superAdobe" technique[2]. I also have personal experience with this, having built a dome with its founder Nader Khalili over 20 years ago. This system allows the construction of spectacularly beautiful high-quality homes using nothing more than dirt, barbed wire, sandbags, plaster, and quite a lot of low-skill labour. Although there have been pilots around the world, it has notably failed to make any large-scale changes in housing the poor. (The reasons for its lack of broad adoption are complex, and I'm not actually sure I have a good diagnosis. But it's a good point of comparison nonetheless).
Compared to Hexayurts, you're undoubtedly higher-quality -- but also two orders of magnitude slower and more expensive.
Compared to CalEarth, you need much less manual labour -- but that's the one resource that the developing world is rich in. After accounting for a larger workforce (paid at local wages), you're easily an order of magnitude more expensive, as well as less customisable and maintainable by the local populace. I don't see any compelling advantages offhand.
So what's your edge? I've been interested in 3D printed buildings since making that a major focus of my architecture degree in the 1990s, but I've always seen it as becoming competitive in places where the cost or availability of human labour was a limiting factor for construction. In the developing world, that just isn't the case. So how is this a solution to the developing world's problem?
Really glad to hear you are working with local partners. As stated elsewhere in this discussion, I am skeptical. One of my concerns is lack of localization, basically, though I imagine that is not really the correct term in this case. Vernacular architecture tends to be suited to local climate and culture. This type of approach tends to be not.
Here is my other concern:
Our goal is to help power anyone building homes for the poor
Every time I hear people talking about designing housing for the poor, I hear them floating ideas that will essentially help them remain poor. Student housing, senior housing and other housing aimed at demographics that are perceived as having a full life, but not much money, tends to be designed very differently from housing for the poor. Housing for the poor often has poor access to transportation, education, jobs, etc. This can help people trapped in poverty.
Best of luck and I hope you succeed beyond your wildest dreams.
Definitely impressive. I think the challenge once the construction is completed is who will handle the ongoing maintenance for the homes. Without the proper HOA type agreements in place, once the newness wears off, it could become like an suburban version of an SRO.
Also if the houses are built where land is affordable, then they will by definition be built where there are not many options for nearby employment. Fortunately, I do feel like technology (i.e. remote work technologies such as always-on video conferencing at a we-work type setup for the community and/or employment at fulfillment centers outside the urban cores) could play a key role in resolving this paradox.
Are local regulations / building codes congruent with this type of building? Any constraints? (e.g. would you build them in earthquake / hurricane / tornado prone zones)
One of the problems with such schemes is that it is not vernacular housing. It is a top down, one size fits all scheme that contains zero local knowledge and no means to incorporate local knowledge.
Vernacular housing is local traditional housing built with local materials and suited to the local climate. So, adobe in the American Southwest and deep porches in the American Southeast so you can have windows open in rainy weather.
It typically winds up working about as well as transplanting a New York apartment to a farm. A New York apartment makes sense in New York. It doesn't make sense on a farm.
In addition, what happens to the local building trades, whether established or nascent? Are they integrated into the scheme or made redundant?
After watching the video, it's evident this method of construction has another disadvantage over the lifecycle of the structure: The walls cannot be easily modified. (And this is a characteristic and complaint of nearly all poured-in-place concrete construction, often cited by institutional caretakers of brutalist buildings.)
An economical house should be able to change and grow according to the needs and means of its owners. That's much more difficult when adding a door or window requires a diamond-blade, water-cooled saw to cut through a thick structural concrete web while avoiding embedded service conduits. In comparison, walls of concrete block, brick, and wooden studs are more readily modified, though each has other favorable and unfavorable characteristics.
The folks that put together this 3D printer maybe should have visited a country like Mexico to understand the houses are already put together ad-hoc with cinder blocks. You can put together a cinder block house for about $10,000 [1] and pay as you go over months or years requiring no loan or interaction with a bank. You can carry cinder blocks by hand or truck up the side of a mountain and it doesn't require much skill to put together.
And that is including the massive cement markups found in Mexico thanks to PEMEX. Imagine if Mexicans could purchase cement at the prices their neighbors to the North do.
With a team of three carpenters a hand-saw and hammers I could build a house like the one in the picture in 48 hours out of a sustainable material - softwood. With a nailgun I could go quicker still.
I could use a 4x2 studding wall, plywood, breather membrane, counter-batten, clad with larch featheredge. Once up a vapour barrier could stapled inside and recycled paper insulation blown in. Inside that I could line out with fire resistant plasterboard (drywall to my transatlantic cousins) (backed with urethane if extra insulation is needed). This design is easily prefabricated if desired.
To contrast with the concrete one this would
a) use sustainable materials
b) meet the building code of a developed nation.
If you are dead set on a concrete wall then just build a set of plywood forms (shuttering as it was called in my day) and cast it in place. A day to put the forms up and pour. The forms are reusable too once set. Now you have a bunker to insulate, waterproof and line out. In the UK you would need to build some kind of studding inside your pill-box for insulation and damp control, much like the 'barn-conversions' the UK is full of. This makes the concrete bit semi-redundant.
Sorry but I think this is a poor application of 3d printing. All we need now is a start-up to build a house with a cloud-based block-chain to get the VC's really excited.
If you want to look at some really quick constructions there are the brilliant post war 'pre-fabs' of the UK, designed to replace housing lost to bombing. Some could be assembled on-site in 4 hours! There are many still in use today. If it wasn't for the amount of asbestos used there may have been many more still remaining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefabs_in_the_United_Kingdom
Isn't it the case that the vast majority of people lacking housing are really lacking in land (or at least, stable land)?
$10K on a permanent structure is only viable if you have permanent title on the land below it.
There are places in the UK in which you could buy brick-and-mortar constructed homes, fully wired in to electricity, water, gas and telephone lines with a freehold for approx 5x that - the cost usually isn't prohibitive as such, it's the fact that they're in the wrong place (local jobs pay barely anything, or the community is bad).
Similarly I can go out and buy a car for 300 GBP, but the insurance costs (especially if young), excise duty, fuel costs, ongoing maintenance absolutely dwarf it.
I suppose what I'm saying is that I don't feel construction costs are relevant here, there are a whole bunch of regulatory / community / cultural issues in play.
It's just poured concrete. Building house shells from poured concrete is done worldwide. Edison started that; his system for low-cost housing used standard forms that locked together. Then you pour in concrete, wait, remove the forms, and you have a house. He even built in concrete furniture, which wasn't popular.
Much of the world lives in poured-concrete apartment blocks. It's just so cheap. The main problem is crap concrete mixes. If you want to improve concrete construction, come up with a hand-held device where you stick a probe into the mix and it tells you if it's OK.
This has been tried a few times.[1][2] Just pouring on concrete like that doesn't compact it properly. Compare the Lil Bubba curb making machine, a simple machine which makes concrete curbs.[3] It's a slip-form machine; the form gives the concrete a smooth edge and top, and as someone shovels in more concrete, it compacts it and pushes itself along. The 3D concrete printing people need to develop something as good as the Lil Bubba. Then they can make flat, solid walls in place. Some of the competing machines have some slip-form guides, so they get a flat surface.
>It's just poured concrete. Building house shells from poured concrete is done worldwide. Edison started that; his system for low-cost housing used standard forms that locked together. Then you pour in concrete, wait, remove the forms, and you have a house. He even built in concrete furniture, which wasn't popular.
Totally true. And these days it is possible to go even further than that.
Concrete construction can be made even cheaper if the cost is a genuine impediment. If material cost is the issue, you can use large aggregate filler, foaming agents, flyash based cements. If it is the time that is at premium, than you can go for SIPs or stay in place formworks. If workforce is the limiting factor, go for larger concrete pours with concrete flowability enhancers.
How much homelessness exists in developing world because houses are too expensive to build? $4,000 already builds a nice house in many areas, especially when labor is very cheap.
To build a house one must first own or rent the land where to build the house. Investing $4,000 for a house you build illegally is stupid.
When city planning and zoning is inadequate and ownership uncertain, slums naturally emerge.
I have seen a lot of these "neat" solutions over the past few years. And the counter arguments I've seen are "we already have this, it's 10x cheaper, faster to setup, etc...". These arguments are based on things like the Ikea shelters/homes, or other prefab stuff that's _super_ cheap.
But, the arguments against these is that it doesn't provide income for local labor, or use local resources... but neither does this 3d printed house.
So, where is this all really going, when we have multiple solutions right now that could help people, but they are not being used?
Is the problem actually political and corruption, and not technical or monetary? Or are these other solutions just as much hot air, and we really do need a new tech to fill in the gap?
Housing is rarely limited by construction, it's limited by land rights and infrastructure buildout. Oh, and credit availability; even down to "microcredit" for the really poor places.
I'm never quite sure what these approaches add to prefab. This process costs $10k to produce up to an 800 sq ft (74m^2) home. They say this is a fraction of the cost of the average American home, but the average new American home since ~2013 is 2500 sq ft (232 m^2), so of course its a fraction of that, and I guess it cuts out the labor. However, I would imagine that even in El Salvador, the principal cost of a new home is acquiring the land. Surely labor and materials are cheaper there, so what am I missing here?
At first sight it seems to me like it is the usual "flawed" approach to third world problems by people having only first world experience.
Loosely building a house is made of costs coming out of:
1) base materials (and the plants to make them and the logistics to bring them on site)
2) equipment
3) labour
In "first world" countries they can be roughly weighted (as percentage of building costs) as:
1) 40%-50%
2) 10%-15%
3) 35%-50%
So everyone is trying to make more "industrial" the building using prefabricated components, standardized parts, etc, attempting to reduce the labour on site, it is logical.
In not-developed countries, usually pure labour is extremely cheap, while materials (and the logistics) are extremely expensive, besides equipment that (not being available for rent or sub-contracting on the local market) needs to be imported and is only justified on larger projects.
It is not unusual that the same percentages in a not-developed country become:
1) 70%-75%
2) 15%-20%
3) 5%-10%
Additionally the problem might be finding locally skilled labour capable of managing the high tech equipment.
This is a very thoughtful breakdown and we appreciate the interest. We (New Story) have been building houses in developing countries using traditional methods for over 3 years now. Developing this tool is in direct response to the issues we've encountered on the ground. As we look at the 1 billion+ people without adequate housing, this and innovations like it are designed to increase the speed, efficiency, and quality with which homes can be built for those in need.
To those who would say the problem is global organization and the will to end homelessness is not sufficient. Its a good point, but the Internet did not explode onto the global scene from a UN commission. Rather an extraordinary technology was unleashed and the world participated, then it became essential. This is a technology.
The cost of land? At one point in history, it was not unheard of for the government to grant land to people, for free. Not purely out of generosity but in the long term interests of society. Radical?
This is a good example of a worthwhile technology and should be supported.
The danger is, when you get the banks and intermediaries involved, now you have an government contractor building the 4000$ house for $40000. Or more! Prices will rise to meet credit availability. The loans are distorted by the Govt guarantee. This is the sad truth of the housing market and 2008 taught us nothing.
And a 30 year loan to a very poor person? Ultimately a high risk loan guaranteed by the state. Just like the US housing market today.
The most expensive resource at least in India is land, followed by water, electricity and other usual needs that cannot be solved merely by solving the housing problem.
Technology is not always the solution to all problems.
1. You could ameliorate the misery of homelessness by providing a low cost "locker" system where people could store a cubic meter of so of goods while homeless.
2. There are various low cost home plans, shelters made from a single sheet of plywood, hot-bunk and ultra high density housing plans.
3. So far, no one has a sustainable economic model that would encourage an municipality to compete for the existing homeless.
Both architecture and civil engineering are the wrong advances to solve this problem.
How is this in any way locally sustainable. If you want to shelter people then the people need to be able to build and sustain that level of technology.
I applaud the intention behind it but it would be yet another addition to such endeavors. Problem is not the lack of such ideas, the problem is lack of any organized approach to address this problem at a Global Stage.
Similar to World coming together to fight against measles and polio, basic human needs such as shelter, etc. need to be met.
It's the solution one comes up with if they haven't given a minute to ask why 1B people don't have adequate shelter. I don't think this will move the needle a bit.
Constructing walls by laying down layers of cement does not constitute a 3d printed home. How does this automatic wall maker compare to El Salvador labor in cost and quality?
A house, any house, needs to be placed on some plot of land. So as for those who lack shelter, do they already have a piece of land and just can’t cheaply build on it, or is it not having land at all that is the problem
This seems like a better solution for the massive homeless populations in the United States. These could be govt funded and placed on state owned land. I'd love to see it tested out in California. Los Angeles funded the $1.2b proposition HHH. We have around 58,000 homeless. For less than half the allocated funds, you've built a house for all of them. Yes, it's more complicated than that. But it's a start.
They need jobs too, so if you're going to house homeless people it probably makes more sense to have dorm style housing somewhere close to jobs they can do, rather than individual homes farther out.
[+] [-] kragen|8 years ago|reply
If you want to reduce the cost of the building envelope, possibly superadobe, shotcrete on airforms, ferrocrete, and flexible domes are better bets than 3-D printing of concrete. (The geodesic dome was conceived specifically as a solution to this problem, but I'm not convinced it actually does a good job at it.)
What's the current solution these things are competing with? Here in Argentina, the standard low-cost construction approach in the villas miserias is masonry with hollow bricks (18×33 cm), which cost 50¢. So a 6m×6m×3m building envelope requires about 1200 bricks, costing US$600 (AR$12000) if you buy them new instead of scavenging, plus some mortar and a corrugated-metal roof, which add a bit to the cost. It takes several days or even, at times, weeks to finish the construction; usually the family who live there build the house themselves, which is less of an opportunity cost than it sounds like with the unemployment rate as high as it is, especially among youth. Some families pour concrete slabs, others use dirt floors.
So, roughly speaking, this approach has to come down in cost by 10× to even compete with our current vernacular architecture, let alone improve on its pricing.
The concrete-3-D-printing approaches I've seen, like Andrey Rudenko's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ5Elbvvr1M, all share the drawback that they require a long time, because you have to wait for the lower layers of the construction to cure a bit before you can add more layers. Their big advantage is not that they're cheaper than pouring concrete into forms — although they may be, especially if you're building a large building or a dense construction — but that they have a lot of freedom of geometry.
[+] [-] kiliantics|8 years ago|reply
Short of a radical change in how our society works, the only realistic solution to homelessness is going to have to be some kind of decent social housing. Maybe it will somehow be cheaply 3D-printed but the government is going to have to buy the land first. (That, or stop making it exclusive to the rich.) Access to land was the original problem here (since Enclosure Acts) and it has to be part of the solution.
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|8 years ago|reply
A really interesting alternative approach is earth bag building. It uses locally available dirt as a material and would generally work out to be even less than the brick building price you estimated.
Here's a family putting up a 30' diameter building out of earthbags: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5Xl8f2J3sY&t=130s
It is _very_ labor intensive and as you said, it needs time to dry between courses.
[+] [-] nkoren|8 years ago|reply
I'd like to be wrong, but that seems like a kill shot to me. Not only does the new system need to be objectively competitive with the vernacular, but it needs to be so much better that it can overcome the myriad cultural and institutional inertias which have hitherto kept the vernacular locked in place.
Which is why this is a Hard Problem. I doubt that 3D printing alone can solve it. Would love to be pleasantly surprised, however.
Also, thrilled to see another superadobe shoutout on HN!
[+] [-] baybal2|8 years ago|reply
This will be a much bigger change to people whose only other alternative is a carton box.
But I do not see this being a solution. Affordability of housing in developing nations is rarely comes as a number one issue, it is almost always comes after ruined economies, and disfunctional basic civic/municipal institutes: it is no use building those things in countries where a person will never ever earn even those USD $10k.
[+] [-] baybal2|8 years ago|reply
If the goal is simply to transform a slum into something less of a slum. There are no better alternatives if any much big economy of scale be realized for the project.
[+] [-] petra|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Matth3wMarshall|8 years ago|reply
The challenge we face is monumental; there are more than a billion people across the globe living without safe shelter. To make a dent in that number, our ability to scale up has to change.
Steady, linear improvements will never reach the total addressable market of families in need.
We believe R&D and product innovation is essential with a problem of this magnitude. We have to take big swings with forward-thinking technology to achieve a quantum leap in speed, affordability, and quality.
Our goal is to help power anyone building homes for the poor — governments and non-profits alike — to do their best work. As we make these strides, it means more families around the world will have safe shelter and can better actualize their potential.
We’re looking at a one billion person deficit of a basic human need. We believe maintaining the status quo is irresponsible — it’s terrifying to us — as it’ll never tackle this deficit. Our hypothesis today is that this breakthrough to reach more families can be achieved through robotics and 3D home printing.
A year ago, the technology we needed didn’t exist. That’s when we began working with ICON to create a solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem. The exciting result is “the Vulcan,” a 3D Home Printer designed to print a home for less than $4,000 in less than 24 hours. This robotic breakthrough delivers:
* Cost decrease (from $6,500/home to ~$4,000 and even lower future cost) * Speed increase (from ~15 days to 12–24hrs to build one home) * Improved quality and customization of the home unit for families
More here -> newstorycharity.org/3d-home
We'd love to answer any and all questions.
[+] [-] jaclaz|8 years ago|reply
1) How would the hypothetical 15 days/home reduced to 24h/home be relevant [1]
2) How the new machine is compatible with the statement on your site:
https://newstorycharity.org/sponsor/
>Built By Locals
>By training local labor and buying locally sourced construction materials your donation not only builds a home, but it stimulates local economies and teaches skills in the process.
[1] Please consider also how the 24h are per home is also per machine/robot, if you assemble 15 teams of local builders you have exactly the same production
[+] [-] nkoren|8 years ago|reply
Two points of comparison.
First, the Hexayurt[1]. The inventor of the Hexayurt system is a good friend of mine. He created it to provide higher-quality shelter for the bottom billion, particularly in refugee camps. It is actually cheaper than a tent, not much harder to set up, and provides a far more durable and climate-controlled experience. Unfortunately, although it's made a fair impact at Burning Man, it has failed to take root in the context it was designed for. The gatekeepers at refugee camps don't want to provide housing which conveys a sense of permanence; therefore the tents have stayed even hough they're worse in every possible metric.
Second, the CalEarth Foundation's "superAdobe" technique[2]. I also have personal experience with this, having built a dome with its founder Nader Khalili over 20 years ago. This system allows the construction of spectacularly beautiful high-quality homes using nothing more than dirt, barbed wire, sandbags, plaster, and quite a lot of low-skill labour. Although there have been pilots around the world, it has notably failed to make any large-scale changes in housing the poor. (The reasons for its lack of broad adoption are complex, and I'm not actually sure I have a good diagnosis. But it's a good point of comparison nonetheless).
Compared to Hexayurts, you're undoubtedly higher-quality -- but also two orders of magnitude slower and more expensive.
Compared to CalEarth, you need much less manual labour -- but that's the one resource that the developing world is rich in. After accounting for a larger workforce (paid at local wages), you're easily an order of magnitude more expensive, as well as less customisable and maintainable by the local populace. I don't see any compelling advantages offhand.
So what's your edge? I've been interested in 3D printed buildings since making that a major focus of my architecture degree in the 1990s, but I've always seen it as becoming competitive in places where the cost or availability of human labour was a limiting factor for construction. In the developing world, that just isn't the case. So how is this a solution to the developing world's problem?
1: http://hexayurt.com/
2: http://www.calearth.org/
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|8 years ago|reply
Here is my other concern:
Our goal is to help power anyone building homes for the poor
Every time I hear people talking about designing housing for the poor, I hear them floating ideas that will essentially help them remain poor. Student housing, senior housing and other housing aimed at demographics that are perceived as having a full life, but not much money, tends to be designed very differently from housing for the poor. Housing for the poor often has poor access to transportation, education, jobs, etc. This can help people trapped in poverty.
Best of luck and I hope you succeed beyond your wildest dreams.
[+] [-] CodeWriter23|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpao79|8 years ago|reply
Also if the houses are built where land is affordable, then they will by definition be built where there are not many options for nearby employment. Fortunately, I do feel like technology (i.e. remote work technologies such as always-on video conferencing at a we-work type setup for the community and/or employment at fulfillment centers outside the urban cores) could play a key role in resolving this paradox.
[+] [-] nowarninglabel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickthemagicman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|8 years ago|reply
Vernacular housing is local traditional housing built with local materials and suited to the local climate. So, adobe in the American Southwest and deep porches in the American Southeast so you can have windows open in rainy weather.
It typically winds up working about as well as transplanting a New York apartment to a farm. A New York apartment makes sense in New York. It doesn't make sense on a farm.
[+] [-] reneherse|8 years ago|reply
After watching the video, it's evident this method of construction has another disadvantage over the lifecycle of the structure: The walls cannot be easily modified. (And this is a characteristic and complaint of nearly all poured-in-place concrete construction, often cited by institutional caretakers of brutalist buildings.)
An economical house should be able to change and grow according to the needs and means of its owners. That's much more difficult when adding a door or window requires a diamond-blade, water-cooled saw to cut through a thick structural concrete web while avoiding embedded service conduits. In comparison, walls of concrete block, brick, and wooden studs are more readily modified, though each has other favorable and unfavorable characteristics.
[+] [-] mikepurvis|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snissn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shiftpgdn|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.curbed.com/2015/1/2/10006114/mexico-affordable-h...
[+] [-] technofiend|8 years ago|reply
See https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1019426769244153760 for a dated explanation.
[+] [-] jimnotgym|8 years ago|reply
With a team of three carpenters a hand-saw and hammers I could build a house like the one in the picture in 48 hours out of a sustainable material - softwood. With a nailgun I could go quicker still.
I could use a 4x2 studding wall, plywood, breather membrane, counter-batten, clad with larch featheredge. Once up a vapour barrier could stapled inside and recycled paper insulation blown in. Inside that I could line out with fire resistant plasterboard (drywall to my transatlantic cousins) (backed with urethane if extra insulation is needed). This design is easily prefabricated if desired.
To contrast with the concrete one this would
a) use sustainable materials
b) meet the building code of a developed nation.
If you are dead set on a concrete wall then just build a set of plywood forms (shuttering as it was called in my day) and cast it in place. A day to put the forms up and pour. The forms are reusable too once set. Now you have a bunker to insulate, waterproof and line out. In the UK you would need to build some kind of studding inside your pill-box for insulation and damp control, much like the 'barn-conversions' the UK is full of. This makes the concrete bit semi-redundant.
Sorry but I think this is a poor application of 3d printing. All we need now is a start-up to build a house with a cloud-based block-chain to get the VC's really excited.
If you want to look at some really quick constructions there are the brilliant post war 'pre-fabs' of the UK, designed to replace housing lost to bombing. Some could be assembled on-site in 4 hours! There are many still in use today. If it wasn't for the amount of asbestos used there may have been many more still remaining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefabs_in_the_United_Kingdom
[+] [-] raise_throw|8 years ago|reply
$10K on a permanent structure is only viable if you have permanent title on the land below it.
There are places in the UK in which you could buy brick-and-mortar constructed homes, fully wired in to electricity, water, gas and telephone lines with a freehold for approx 5x that - the cost usually isn't prohibitive as such, it's the fact that they're in the wrong place (local jobs pay barely anything, or the community is bad).
Similarly I can go out and buy a car for 300 GBP, but the insurance costs (especially if young), excise duty, fuel costs, ongoing maintenance absolutely dwarf it.
I suppose what I'm saying is that I don't feel construction costs are relevant here, there are a whole bunch of regulatory / community / cultural issues in play.
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
Much of the world lives in poured-concrete apartment blocks. It's just so cheap. The main problem is crap concrete mixes. If you want to improve concrete construction, come up with a hand-held device where you stick a probe into the mix and it tells you if it's OK.
This has been tried a few times.[1][2] Just pouring on concrete like that doesn't compact it properly. Compare the Lil Bubba curb making machine, a simple machine which makes concrete curbs.[3] It's a slip-form machine; the form gives the concrete a smooth edge and top, and as someone shovels in more concrete, it compacts it and pushes itself along. The 3D concrete printing people need to develop something as good as the Lil Bubba. Then they can make flat, solid walls in place. Some of the competing machines have some slip-form guides, so they get a flat surface.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ_WqvjJtDw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z-iebHRxJk [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJZMpu4MKn8
[+] [-] baybal2|8 years ago|reply
Totally true. And these days it is possible to go even further than that.
Concrete construction can be made even cheaper if the cost is a genuine impediment. If material cost is the issue, you can use large aggregate filler, foaming agents, flyash based cements. If it is the time that is at premium, than you can go for SIPs or stay in place formworks. If workforce is the limiting factor, go for larger concrete pours with concrete flowability enhancers.
[+] [-] nabla9|8 years ago|reply
To build a house one must first own or rent the land where to build the house. Investing $4,000 for a house you build illegally is stupid. When city planning and zoning is inadequate and ownership uncertain, slums naturally emerge.
[+] [-] RobertRoberts|8 years ago|reply
But, the arguments against these is that it doesn't provide income for local labor, or use local resources... but neither does this 3d printed house.
So, where is this all really going, when we have multiple solutions right now that could help people, but they are not being used?
Is the problem actually political and corruption, and not technical or monetary? Or are these other solutions just as much hot air, and we really do need a new tech to fill in the gap?
[+] [-] pjc50|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ch4s3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|8 years ago|reply
There's acre lots near town here that are $10,000; further away prices go down.
[+] [-] jaclaz|8 years ago|reply
Loosely building a house is made of costs coming out of:
1) base materials (and the plants to make them and the logistics to bring them on site)
2) equipment
3) labour
In "first world" countries they can be roughly weighted (as percentage of building costs) as:
1) 40%-50%
2) 10%-15%
3) 35%-50%
So everyone is trying to make more "industrial" the building using prefabricated components, standardized parts, etc, attempting to reduce the labour on site, it is logical.
In not-developed countries, usually pure labour is extremely cheap, while materials (and the logistics) are extremely expensive, besides equipment that (not being available for rent or sub-contracting on the local market) needs to be imported and is only justified on larger projects.
It is not unusual that the same percentages in a not-developed country become:
1) 70%-75%
2) 15%-20%
3) 5%-10%
Additionally the problem might be finding locally skilled labour capable of managing the high tech equipment.
[+] [-] morganjlopes|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpweb|8 years ago|reply
To those who would say the problem is global organization and the will to end homelessness is not sufficient. Its a good point, but the Internet did not explode onto the global scene from a UN commission. Rather an extraordinary technology was unleashed and the world participated, then it became essential. This is a technology.
The cost of land? At one point in history, it was not unheard of for the government to grant land to people, for free. Not purely out of generosity but in the long term interests of society. Radical?
This is a good example of a worthwhile technology and should be supported.
The danger is, when you get the banks and intermediaries involved, now you have an government contractor building the 4000$ house for $40000. Or more! Prices will rise to meet credit availability. The loans are distorted by the Govt guarantee. This is the sad truth of the housing market and 2008 taught us nothing.
And a 30 year loan to a very poor person? Ultimately a high risk loan guaranteed by the state. Just like the US housing market today.
[+] [-] ddingus|8 years ago|reply
Tech can mitigate it as can mentoring and enabling at scale.
Quality matters. The better the homes are, the better the return on investment and quality of life is, both being necessary goals.
[+] [-] atmartins|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newyankee|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fruzz|8 years ago|reply
You can already build a home of that size for $4,000. The lack of permanent shelter for the world's poorest isn't a technology problem.
[+] [-] maxerickson|8 years ago|reply
Compare the price to a similar structure built using the same techniques used to build a home and you end up right in the same ballpark:
http://84homes.84lumber.com/Garage%20prices.pdf
[+] [-] smacktoward|8 years ago|reply
So we should just compare it to the typical Bay Area home then?
(I kid, I kid)
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] CharlesMerriam2|8 years ago|reply
1. You could ameliorate the misery of homelessness by providing a low cost "locker" system where people could store a cubic meter of so of goods while homeless. 2. There are various low cost home plans, shelters made from a single sheet of plywood, hot-bunk and ultra high density housing plans. 3. So far, no one has a sustainable economic model that would encourage an municipality to compete for the existing homeless.
Both architecture and civil engineering are the wrong advances to solve this problem.
[+] [-] 893helios|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m23khan|8 years ago|reply
Similar to World coming together to fight against measles and polio, basic human needs such as shelter, etc. need to be met.
[+] [-] JackFr|8 years ago|reply
It's the solution one comes up with if they haven't given a minute to ask why 1B people don't have adequate shelter. I don't think this will move the needle a bit.
[+] [-] petermcneeley|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VikingCoder|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubarb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theNJR|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffreyrogers|8 years ago|reply