New Story, a US non-profit organisation that aims to tackle homelessness globally, is to 3D-print a housing estate of 50 homes in Latin America. The houses can be printed in a day and are intended to provide low-cost housing for poor families.
With 3D-printed homes, the non-profit organisation aims to create housing for low-income families. The homes should cost less than $7,000 each and will only be available to households with an income of less than $200 a month.
Developing low-cost housing
New Story is a startup that has set itself the goal of developing a solution that can build housing in poor areas in a short time, with the aim of reducing homelessness. Previously, New Story was active in Haiti, which was hit by a severe earthquake in 2010 that destroyed many homes. Housing rebuilding in this region was slow, which prompted New Story to develop a new and fast construction process for low-cost housing.
For the project, New Story has partnered with US company Icon, which has developed a 3D printer for homes. This printer - the Vulcan II - measures about 10 by 3 metres and can print the walls and intermediate floors of a home in less than a day. This makes it possible to build an entire housing estate in a relatively short time frame.
Walls and mezzanine floors
The Vulcan II can build a home layer by layer by printing concrete. After the printing process, only a conventional roof, windows and utilities need to be added to the homes. "We are bringing very futuristic technology to the families who need it most," Brett Hagler, CEO and co-founder of New Story, told Fast Company in a comment.
New Story already printed a test home in a backyard in Austin in 2018.
Operation by local talent
Since then, the design of both the homes and the Vulcan II have been further refined, including a revamp of the controls. "It is very important for us as an international development organisation that the machine can be operated by local talent," Alexandria Lafci, co-founder of New Story, explains to Fast Company. The printing process is therefore largely automated.
In a video, New Story shows how the Vulcan II prints the walls and mezzanine floors for a small house in a short time.
In which country New Story's homes will be built has not yet been announced. New Story announced at SXSW last year its intention to build the homes in El Salvadore. The non-profit organisation has been building traditional low-cost housing in this country for some time. Due to several factors including the accessibility of the land and the time needed to both get the required permits and build the necessary utilities, New Story is for now refraining from doing so. The organisation's first 3D-printed homes will therefore be printed in another country in Latin America.
Project Milestone
New Story is not the only party working on 3D-printing homes. In the Netherlands, for instance, the municipality of Eindhoven, TU Eindhoven and the companies Van Wijnen, Vesteda, Saint Gobain-Weber Beamix and Witteveen+Bos are working on Project Milestone. Within this project, five homes will be printed in concrete in the Eindhoven new housing estate Meerhoven. The houses are being built one by one, each time learning lessons from houses built previously. This is also reflected in the complexity of the houses. For instance, the first house to be built within Project Milestone will be a single-storey house that will be pre-printed in modules and assembled on site. The fifth homes is to be a two-storey house printed entirely on site.
Office of the Future
A 3D-printed building was already opened in Dubai in 2016. It is the 'Office of the Future' which was printed with a 3D printer attached to a robotic arm. The building consists of several modules printed by a 3D printer. These modules were then assembled on site using a crane to create the final building. Dubai has stated its ambition to 3D-print a quarter of all new buildings by 2025.
3D-Printed Habitat Challenge
Space agency NASA wants to 3D-print homes on Mars to house astronauts. To this end, the organisation has developed the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, which challenges participants to design and scale a 3D-printable home for Mars. As part of this project, a 1.5-tonne building block made of simulated lunar dust was 3D-printed early this year.
Author: Wouter Hoeffnagel
Source: New Story
Source: Fast Company
