3D printed house investment

How to Invest in 3D Printed Houses ? What Are Your Options! – 3D Print Schooling

One of the most crucial questions you would ask yourself is that when dealing with 3D printing technology is whether 3D printing is worth investing in? 3D printing technology is a worthy investment if you take your time to learn the process well and act on the information. If you have a good plan, you can save quite a lot as well as make money through 3D printing technology.

3D housing is a worthy investment that is going to change the real estate industry in the near future. 3D houses are expected to last almost the same as conventional concrete houses. It is considered a more environmentally friendly choice within the construction industry. For more on this check out our post Are 3D Printed Houses / Structures Sustainable?

The construction industry has generally changed with the emergence of 3D printing technology. The 3D printing construction technology is today promising to build houses cheaper, more accurately, and faster with fewer people. Certain 3D printing construction materials have also been said to be stronger and last longer compared to traditional building materials.

It is out of these benefits that 3D printing construction has gained momentum on very positive growth. In fact, the universal construction robot market is projected to grow by approximately 20% within the next five years (from 2022 to 2027). With this growth, you may ask yourself who is constructing these buildings, and who are the buyers? Let us have a look at how to invest in 3D printed houses.

Some people are still skeptical about the viability of investing in 3D printed houses however, with every new project, this opinion does not hold water. 3D printing construction firms are in the spotlight today as, project developers, clients, and engineers try to understand this new technology.

So far, we do not have universal standards around the material and methods used as innovations emerge from a vast range of global players. In as much as most local building codes do not have provision for 3D printed homes, however, this is quickly changing.

Table of Contents

1- Purchasing a 3D Printed House
- How Can You Purchase a 3D Printed House?
- What to check on if you intend to buy a 3D printed house
- Will the Global Market Accept 3D Printed Houses?
2- Buy 3D Printing ETF Stock
3- Start a 3D printing Contracting & Consulting Company
Final Thoughts

1- Purchasing a 3D Printed House

The housing industry market has been white-hot! Most real estate experts predict that it will remain hot, with the continuation of high market demand and low supply. This clearly gives good indicators to invest in this industry.

The strain on the housing industry has led to renewed interest in 3D-printed houses. A 3D printed house is increasingly becoming a potential way to quickly construct and own affordable housing. Let us take a look at how to best invest in 3D-printed houses.

How Can You Purchase a 3D Printed House?

For now, 3D printed housing market is opening slowly. Most 3D printed houses available in the market are located in less densely populated areas like the west coast areas of the U.S. however, this is shifting with the increasing demand and more construction firms adopting 3D printing technology.

It is advisable that you ask your Local Realtor about the current availability of 3D printed houses since they are more well-informed on houses availability in the market within your area and can always advise you on when and where to invest.

Here is a video of 3D printed houses in Texas, U.S that are commercially offered to the public and interviewing potential buyers,

What to check on if you intend to buy a 3D printed house

Real estate experts have recommended that an investor within this industry should never forgo an inspection exercise, even for new houses. This applies to 3D-printed houses too. Even if the 3D printed home has been printed perfectly, most of the interior materials such as cabinets, sinks, etc. may have installation mistakes or gaps.

Here are some of the common issues with new 3D printed houses, investors need to be keen on:

Plumbing issues – leaks, hot/cold water reversals
Improperly installed appliances
Faulty electric work – damaged or improper wiring
Shrinkage cracks as a result of concrete that has not been mixed properly.
HVAC issues such as dirty ducts, malfunctioning thermostats, or loss of connection
Grading/drainage issues – Your 3D printed house could be printed properly, but its printed could be shifting a lot.

On a side note, also check out “Can You Make a 3D Printed House out Of Clay?“

House inspection is a vital exercise for 3D printed houses because very little will be covered on the disclosure statement, which only covers known defects. The disclosure statement doesn’t require the seller to investigate for unknown defects, which are likely to remain unnoticed until you occupy the house. (Source)

There are no regulations involved in getting 3D printed houses approved for occupancy for now

This means that there are no set standards to be followed for things like public safety codes, plumbing, and structural integrity. For this reason, it is advisable that you do a background check on the company producing your 3D printed house to ensure they have the necessary engineering background. (Source)

When purchasing 3D printed houses, your best bet should involve working with experienced real estate agents, who are capable of vetting signs of quality 3D houses workmanship. Also, they may be familiar with the engineer’s reputation among history buyers, which can help you make informed decisions.

Will the Global Market Accept 3D Printed Houses?

The U. S. is apparently stuck in a prolonged seller’s market as a result of many market forces. New home construction firms are still not producing new houses fast enough to face the aging housing stock. With the constant labor shortage within the construction industry and the growing U.S. population, there is the likelihood that investment in 3D printed real estate market will remain very competitive.

3D printed houses can be an opportunity to become homeowners without pulling too much of your income into this investment. However, there are still a few limitations. One key limitation of 3D printing within the construction industry is that it’s most suited for areas with plenty of land.

At the moment, it’s not possible to 3D print skyscrapers. Therefore, 3D printed houses will not be very much applicable in most city centers with a high density of buildings and people.

Before you buy a 3D printed house, make sure to check out our list of 3D Printed House Advantages and Disadvantages

2- Buy 3D Printing ETF Stock

It’s probably the easiest way to get exposure to the 3d printing industry without having to put so much of your time ( the most passive way of investing in 3d printing). The ticker simple is ‘PRNT’, however, as of this writing, ‘PRNT’ does not hold companies that operate in 3d printed structures but will likely have to include them in the future as the market grows.

3- Start a 3D printing Contracting & Consulting Company

You can also opt to buy your own 3D printer to print your own home and offer your services to others. The cheapest home 3D printer in the market is sold at 35,000 USD, but this excludes many hidden costs. For more on this, check out our post Can I Build My Own 3D Printed House? Hidden Costs & Prices of Construction 3D Printers!

Currently, there is a very limited number of contractors, which could highly benefit early adopters by accessing growing untapped market space.

For more on 3D printing houses process, check out our post How 3D Printed Houses Are Made? Steps & Materials Used!

Final Thoughts

3D printing technology slowly making inroads in the construction and real estates’ industry through the global economy by localizing and speeding the delivery time and reducing the production cost. However, just like with other technology investments, gaining inroads will not be a straight curve.

Expect ups and downs in these stocks as the technology progresses with new inventions every day. If you decide to invest in 3D printed houses, do it in a measured way. Maintain a diversified portfolio.

The Largest 3D-Printed Home Community Is Set to Break Ground in Austin: Can Investors Get in?

Modern problems call for modern solutions, or so Icon and Lennar (LEN 1.23%) would have us believe. In the face of building-supply kerfluffles, yo-yoing lumber prices, and labor shortages, the duo has taken a different approach to creating new housing: Just print them.

Icon has developed one of the world's first 3D printers for houses. That's right. Utilizing the same technology that's used to build figurines and tiny tools on home 3D printers, Icon has managed to create a 3D printer for houses -- in which people will live.

Now, they've teamed up with Lennar to create a 100-home subdivision in Austin, Texas, to help ease the explosive levels of pent-up housing demand in that city.

Image Source: Getty Images

What is a 3D-printed house?

It's the first question everyone asks, so let's just knock it out. What is a 3D-printed house? It's a house that's 3D-printed. It's absolutely that simple. Instead of using traditional stick framing for the wall systems, a 3D-printed home has walls that are extruded using the biggest 3D printer in the world. A house's walls are printed one layer at a time, building from the ground upward. And nearly any shape is possible, which leaves a lot of room for architectural creativity.

Instead of plastic, the materials used include a proprietary blend of Portland cement, polymer, and supplementary cementitious materials, along with other additives meant to strengthen the finished product. This glorious goop is known as "Lavacrete."

Once the Lavacrete walls are completed, laborers and construction specialists can then quickly add a roof, windows, doors and finish the interior with familiar materials like drywall, trim and tile, when desired. The finish work isn't always strictly necessary, as the Lavacrete walls are complete as they stand, but many people prefer a more traditional look.

3D-printed houses may be the future of construction

Although the technology is fairly new, 3D-printed homes have been in small-scale production for a few years now, with Icon's first home printed in 2019. Labor shortages have plagued the construction industry ever since the Great Recession caused many construction workers to seek other employment, and jobs were not created to replace them. As the real estate industry rebounded, not even the jobs that remained could be filled, which continues to be a struggle today.

This is one of the many problems that a 3D-printed home promises to solve. Instead of a dozen or so people required to put together a traditional home, Icon's Vulcan printer only takes three to four people to run. Additional work still needs to be done by a traditional construction crew, but considerable labor is saved by using the Vulcan printer in a big development like the Icon/Lennar project in Austin.

However, the savings in labor and materials aren't the only reasons 3D-printing homes makes sense. In many climates, 3D-printed homes provide additional green benefits, with thick, heavy walls with voids that act as additional insulation and sturdy cement structures that literally can't be burned, rotted by moisture, or destroyed by earthquakes.

The one downside I see is that these homes must be built on a cement slab, and that can be challenging in some areas due to interesting geography and building traditions that may cause buyer resistance. For example, where I live in the Ozarks, basements are popular features because of frequent tornadoes. As of now, Icon can't build a basement home even though they already have a sort of in-ground slab at the bottom. Even so, the Sun Belt is where it's at right now, and there's nothing more fitting for the Sun Belt than a slab foundation home.

Investing in the Icon/Lennar Austin subdivision

Icon is not a publicly traded company and has made no public statement indicating it intends to head in that direction. So, you can't just buy Icon stock and be done with it as of this moment. So far, however, Icon has raised $266 million in funding through three funding rounds, with the most recent Series B round being led by Norwest Venture Partners. Lennar was one of the biggest investors in that round, funding its position through LEN X, Lennar's technology and innovation arm.

You've got a few options if you want to invest in Icon or one of its projects -- and who wouldn't? First, you can wait for the next funding round, should it happen. That'll probably be the third quarter in 2022 based on the timing of other funding rounds. Second, you can directly invest in structures created by Icon's giant toys by buying some of these houses in the Lennar subdivision.

Third, you could invest in Lennar, because I have a sneaky suspicion that if these 100 houses take off, the company may be interested in acquiring Icon straight out. There's no data to back that; I'm just looking into my empty teacup and reading the leaves lying in the bottom. And what I see is that first, there was a major investment and then a pretty serious partnership with technology that's never scaled so big before. Lennar is always looking for faster, cheaper, and better ways to build more houses -- and having an army of giant 3D printers seems like it would fit the bill.

Kristi Waterworth has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Construction 3D printing is waiting for a breakthrough The first construction projects using this technology appeared only in 2014. We are talking, first of all, about the so-called small architectural forms (benches, flower beds, fences). They never even dreamed about building houses. But already in 2015, the Russian startup Apis Cor made a splash - it printed a whole house in the Moscow region. Since then, news about new 3D printed houses has periodically appeared. However, despite the fact that the technology proved to be very promising in terms of the speed of construction of housing and the reduction in the cost of construction, no mass implementation followed.

Construction is the world's number one market. And, if many technological innovations are being introduced in the field of high-rise construction, then little has changed in the field of low-rise construction over the past decades. The last 30 years have seen the availability of the Internet, mobile phones, mobile internet, robotics taken to a new level, etc., but when you get to a house construction site, you are unlikely to find many technological innovations. Automation is practically non-existent, and manual labor prevails. 2020 was a test of strength for the whole world, and also led to the highest level of inflation, which, first of all, hit the construction market, there was a dramatic change in prices for metals, cement, wood and much more.

This Internet meme shows what happened to the cost of building materials in just a year. And the process is still going on. At the same time, there is a serious rise in the cost of labor, and there is an acute shortage of it. All this leads to a sharp rise in the cost of building houses. No matter how strange it may sound, statistics show that the growth of automation does not occur when everything is fine, but precisely in crisis situations, during increased competition, reduced demand and the need to urgently look for new technologies to increase production efficiency. So it happened this time, and after some stagnation, construction 3D printing received a new impetus for development.

Preparing to write an article, I turned to the founder of Arkon - Boris Kozlov y. Arkon was established in 2020 and is engaged in the production of construction 3D printers, both of the workshop type for creating prefabs (prefabricated houses) and of the portal type, capable of printing a two-story house. I asked Boris the key, in my opinion, question:

- Construction 3D printing appeared in 2014, but no mass introduction of this technology followed in 7-8 years. Why do you think this happened, and why is there a surge of new projects right now?

- It seems to me that the reason is the snowball effect. The technology had to mature, grow from a hypothesis to a pilot implementation, and finally to commercialization and scaling (what is happening now). In addition, it should be borne in mind that construction is one of the most conservative industries, where, unlike even aviation and the automotive industry, there is still an extremely low introduction of digital solutions and automation in the field of the production process itself - the construction itself. The issue of regulation and certification also plays an important role - this process is long and creates an additional lag.

In 2014-2016 the first samples of building 3D printers and prototypes of printed buildings appeared. The concepts of various form factors of construction 3D printers and types of printing materials were tested.

In 2017-2018 in the world, the first notable investments were made in a number of construction 3D printing start-ups. Further, by 2020, these investments "rolled" in the form of reaching a certain level of technology maturity - the first commercial products (3D printers and houses) appeared.

Finally, in 2020-2022 it became clear that the hypotheses of the effectiveness of construction 3D printing were justified (cheaper, faster, more environmentally friendly), and large investments began in the industry. A striking example is the investment of GE (the French division of General Electric) in the Danish COBOD or the achievement of a capitalization of $ 2 billion by the American company ICON.

In 2022-2023 over 1,000 buildings will be printed worldwide already, scaling from single buildings/pilot projects to entire villages and major infrastructure/reinforced concrete implementations. In addition, in a number of countries, by now, a regulatory framework has been created or is being actively created for the introduction of additive technologies in the construction industry.

Thus, I believe that the specified time period is a fairly natural cycle of technology development, which is likely to experience exponential growth in the next decade.

According to ResearchAndMarket report, the global construction 3D printing market is valued at USD 354.3 million in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 11068.1 million by 2027, growing by 99.04%.

Various market processes affect the prices and behavior of participants in the global 3D construction printing market. They create price signals that are the result of changes in the demand and supply curves for a product or service. They can be associated with both macroeconomic and microeconomic factors. Even human emotions can also drive decisions, influence the market, and create price signals.

Now let's take a quick look at what the construction 3D printer is. Without delving too deeply into the technology, we can say that construction 3D printers are very similar to classic FDM/FFF printers that print with plastic, but instead of plastic, the material here is a cement mixture, which is fed directly into the nozzle and forms an object by layer-by-layer overlay. Printers are also portal, on the basis of a flying boom, with a robotic arm.

Pictured left is a construction printer based on a boom. The figure on the right is a gantry construction 3D printer

In the figure above, a construction 3D printer in the form of a robot arm installed on a mobile platform.

Everything changed completely when, in the summer of 2021, the American company ICON, which was trying to introduce 3D printing into the construction of various auxiliary facilities, signed a contract with one of the largest American developers, Lennar, to build a village of 100 houses in Texas and immediately became a unicorn , having received 200 million dollars of investments from several investment funds.

Pictured is a 3D printed house in Austin, Texas. A 3D printed house in Austin, Texas.

At the same time, the Danish company COBOD, created by the world's largest construction formwork company PERRI, began selling its gantry 3D construction printers and participating in construction projects around the world. In the photo below, a modern two-story house built in Germany and a school building in Malawi, built in record time with a minimal budget.

Few things unite developed, developing and poor countries, everywhere their problems and tasks, but Affordable housing shortage is a global agenda . If in poor countries there is an acute problem with the increase in the number of homeless people due to a lack of housing, as such, then in developing countries it is necessary to dramatically accelerate the number of new housing being built to meet the needs of a growing population. In developed countries, the problem is primarily in the cost of housing, which has risen in price to such an extent that it has become practically inaccessible to young people. And with the simultaneous increase in life expectancy in these countries, this problem is only getting worse.

At the same time, the trend towards "green agenda " is developing, reducing CO2 emissions, building with more environmentally friendly materials, etc. But, unfortunately, so far the construction industry is the absolute leader in CO2 emissions, as well as in the amount of garbage that each construction site leaves behind. This is not to say that construction 3D printing solves all these problems, but at least it is moving in the right direction. Let's look at this with a few illustrative examples.

3D printed walls.

Today, when we talk about 3D printing houses, we are talking about printing walls. Everything else (foundation, windows, doors, ceilings and roof) is done in the traditional way. 3D printed walls are built as fixed formwork, which significantly saves the amount of cement used , and this, in turn, reduces the cost of construction and reduces the environmental impact of cement production. In addition, with this method of construction, no additional waste is produced, the strength of the structure does not suffer. It can be reinforced, as shown in the photo on the left, and engineering communications can be immediately laid, as shown in the photo on the right, which also affects the final speed of the construction of the object. At the same time, the total weight of the structure is reduced, the remaining cavities can be filled with lightweight foam concrete, insulation, straw or any other available material. Such a lightweight design can use a lighter foundation. The construction method itself is more economical in terms of material, and therefore environmentally friendly.

Eco-concrete with the addition of polymers is being actively developed, the production of which reduces CO2 emissions from 30% to 100%. The Apis Cor company mentioned at the beginning of the article, which built a house in the suburbs in 2015, is now based in hot Florida, plans to start using this material in its projects.

Another startup from Russia, Mighty Buildings, headquartered in California, initially relied on a polymer with the addition of mineral chips. And while the company doesn't build entire homes, it only makes wall panels, it has won numerous design awards, as well as a $400 million valuation in several investment rounds.

As a result, with a rough calculation, we can say that the total savings on the construction of walls can reach 30%, and the total cost of the house can be reduced by 10%. This is true for houses designed for conventional construction. And if you initially design with 3D printing, you can improve this ratio by optimizing the laying of communications, the ability to immediately print interior walls, bookmark niches for bathrooms, fireplaces, built-in wardrobes and kitchens, as was done in the house built by COBOD in Germany.

"There are spots on the sun." Despite all the advantages of construction 3D printing, has several significant disadvantages of . The main one is layering, which cannot be avoided at the current level of technology development.

The photo above shows the layering of the 3D printed walls.

This task can be worked in several directions:

Ribbed walls can be plastered, painted and played with as a design element. That's how ICON does it in the US, for example their latest project House Zero is done that way and has won a number of design awards.

3D printed House Zero in the USA, built by ICON.

Use special "shutters" on the print head that allow smooth layers, as COBOD and other manufacturers do. The photo below shows that this does not ensure the complete absence of layering.

Fully sand the surface to get the usual smooth wall for plastering, painting, wallpapering or other finishing. It is possible, but it will require huge labor costs, which can reduce the overall efficiency of using 3D printing.

Pictured above is a 3D printed wall sanded smooth.

The second problem is the required temperature. Ideally, printing should take place at temperatures between +5C° and +30C°. Humidity is also important. Using additives, you can push these boundaries, but not indefinitely. At strong sub-zero temperatures, printing will be possible in the field only if the construction site is covered with a dome and the required temperature is reached inside with the help of heat guns. In conditions of intense heat, it is preferable to print at night. Another solution could be to print the wall panels in the shop and assemble them on site. Of course, each of these decisions will have a negative impact on the economic efficiency of the project.

Building 3D printing can be useful not only for the construction of houses . With its help, you can solve many other problems, and there its disadvantages will not matter. For example, the American concern GE uses COBOD printers to build towers for wind turbines in the shop. Ribbed surface and temperature restrictions in this case do not play any role. Construction takes place in the shop, after which the object is transported to the installation site.

3D printed wind tower. 3D printed wind tower.

Construction 3D printing, or, as it is also called, additive construction, has just appeared, and I want to believe in its bright future. There are many prerequisites for this, but a lot still needs to be done for success. First of all, it is necessary to develop principles for designing houses for building 3D printing. Then it is necessary to attract top architects to create landmark projects, which can be followed by the mass introduction of a new and very promising technology. Construction 3D printing could help solve the global housing shortage and bring more automation to other areas of construction.

Alexander Kornveits

Expert in the field of additive technologies and 3D printing, head of the Tsvetnoy Mir company

Read the article - Construction 3D printing. 8 reasons why she will be an achievement

3D printing has long outgrown its initial capabilities of rapid prototyping and has evolved into a full-fledged manufacturing process known in the industry as additive manufacturing. It is being used to manufacture an ever-wider range of products, from dental implants to jet engine parts. Indeed, it was only a matter of time before she made it to the construction industry.

Simply put, houses built with a 3D construction printer are built by layering the material. The paste-like concrete mix is extruded through the nozzle, creating walls from scratch one layer at a time.

At first glance, this does not seem complicated, but in fact it is not. While the prospects for such a construction process are enormous, it is still in the very early stages of development, but has already shown promising results and has quickly attracted media attention.

The question is, is the hype around 3D construction printing really deserved? In this article, we will delve into this topic and show why we believe 3D printed homes could be the next big thing.

Construction speed

3D printing a house is significantly faster compared to traditional building methods. While the actual timeline is highly dependent on the size of the project, in most cases, construction takes only a few days.

Take, for example, the first fully 3D printed house in America, built by construction company ICON for the nonprofit New Story in 2018. The 33-square-foot house in Texas took about 47 hours of print time to create, spanning several days.

Just two years later, another American company built a huge 177 square meter home in just 8 days, taking just 48 hours of total printing time. However, remember that 3D printers can only create exterior and interior walls.

However, according to SQ4D, the company responsible for the project, this is 40% less compared to conventional building technologies. While this may seem insignificant at first glance, 3D construction printing is still an evolving technology that still has a lot to improve. So, most likely, the construction time will be reduced even more.

Fewer builders

At construction sites, 3D printing requires fewer workers than traditional sites as the printing equipment does most of the work.

Traditional construction requires many stages, including a whole team of five to six people who unload, transport and mix materials before laying the structures. Once set up, the concrete 3D printer only needs a few people to monitor and control the process.

For example, for the aforementioned house of 177 sq. meters from SQ4D will require only 3 people on site, which, according to the company, will replace a team of more than 20 unskilled workers. This shows just how well this whole process is automated, and why 3D construction printers are such a promising alternative.

In addition, fewer workers on site also result in fewer work-related injuries and deaths. According to OSHA statistics, construction alone is the cause of death for one in five workers in the US. If done responsibly, 3D printers can help reduce these numbers significantly.

Lower construction cost

It is believed that 3D oven houses are cheaper to build, but this is somewhat debatable as mass building 3D printers are expensive equipment and still have many limitations. But let's stick to facts and figures.

We've already established that 3D printing a home is faster than traditional building, and as they say, time is money. Less time spent on site means both equipment and workers are more quickly available for other projects, theoretically doubling construction volume compared to today.

Add this to the greatly reduced number of workers required. In addition, the raw materials used by some 3D printers can be partially assembled on site, reducing the costs associated with finding, storing, and transporting them to the site.

Now let's get down to the numbers: Apis Cor's 40 sq. m in Russia, according to rumors, cost about $ 10,000, including all windows, roofing, wiring and interior decoration. This is shockingly small. ICON is currently working on 60-square-meter homes that are planned to cost as little as $4,000.

Yes, 3D printing construction equipment is still very expensive, like any other cutting-edge technology, but there is a lot of room for improvement, and as the technology advances, the costs associated with equipment and operation will undoubtedly decrease.

Unique building possibilities

3D printing opens up unique building opportunities that would be either impossible or too expensive to implement with conventional building technologies.

Some say that in order to get the most out of any 3D printing process, the high degree of design freedom afforded by these technologies must be taken into account. This also applies to construction and architecture, where innovation and creativity are especially encouraged.

3D printing allows you to create complex shapes and forms without any extra effort. For example, a concrete 3D printer can create intricately curved walls just as easily as straight ones. Unconventional architecture can improve the appearance of buildings and even optimize interior space.

Take, for example, the "Office of the Future" in Dubai, 3D printed by the Chinese company Winsun, which houses the Dubai Futures Foundation. The curved appearance would require an excessive amount of work to recreate using traditional building techniques.

Engineers can also get creative as the print media can be finely tuned to achieve the best properties. From a finished batch, concrete is already a first-class building material, resistant to most environmental influences such as fire and moisture, as well as an excellent thermal insulator for cold and warm weather.

High performance materials

The 3D printing process is more efficient in terms of energy and material use compared to traditional construction.

3D printers produce less waste because they only use the right amount of material to create designs: there is no waste from cutting or cutting materials. In addition, since concrete-based raw materials are not shaped, any leftovers can and should be used in the next building.

In addition, raw materials can be made from recycled materials. Back in 2014, the Chinese company Winsun was able to build at least 10 houses in one day using only recycled concrete material, while the Italian 3D printing company WASP made a house from natural mud mixed with waste from local rice production, which included crushed straw and rice husks.

3D printers also consume less energy compared to the entire production chain of conventional construction. Consider all the energy needed to transport raw materials and move entire crews of workers daily to the construction site. By reducing labor intensity and sourcing materials in situ, 3D printing can be more sustainable in the long run.

Situational applicability

Overall, 3D printers can play a central role in various scenarios around the world. All the key points we've covered so far - reducing time, cost, manpower, expanding unique capabilities and efficiency - show how this technology can be very useful in certain situations.

Developing countries constantly face housing problems. The ability to provide enough quality homes at affordable prices is a key factor in sustainable economic development. The relatively fast process of building 3D printers could potentially solve the problems of the homeless in the short term.

This is exactly what New Story and ICON are trying to achieve in Mexico, in Tabasco. The idea is to create the very first community of 3D printed houses for local families who currently live in extreme poverty. A total of 50 fully 3D printed houses of 50 square meters will be built.

3D printed houses can also be useful in situations of humanitarian crisis, especially after natural disasters when houses are tragically destroyed by earthquakes, fires or tsunamis. Communities affected by such events end up with labor and material shortages, not to mention logistical problems. Restoration with 3D printing could be an effective and cheap solution to at least start rebuilding these communities.

Lastly, 3D printing could also make space exploration like Mars possible. The idea is to send automated 3D printing equipment to the red planet, and since the raw materials could be collected locally, the printers could start building living quarters long before the first humans arrived. No wonder NASA is so interested in this technology.

Industry shift and investment

Construction 3D printing not only attracts the attention of industry leaders and investors, it also attracts their money!

The construction 3D printing market has been growing steadily in recent years. Concrete 3D printer maker COBOD reported earnings in just its second year of operation in 2019, which is a huge achievement for any company and more considering how raw this particular market is still.

After 2020, the coronavirus crisis has affected most industries around the world, and construction 3D printing is no exception. However, it seems to be a suitable solution for such cases, given the reduction in the number of workers on site. For this and other reasons, the global construction 3D printing market is expected to grow from $350M in 2022 to $11B in 2027.

You don't have to take our word for it. Just remember that industry leaders are at the top because they understand the market, while big investors only invest their money in real and really promising technologies. 3D printed houses are the next big thing in technology.

Global distribution

3D printed houses are already a reality and they are rapidly spreading around the world.

While 3D printed houses are often seen in architecture competitions or as concept designs, there are plenty of real-life residential structures that are already in use. Take, for example, the Lewis Grand Hotel in the Philippines with 140 sq. meters, completely made using 3D printing, including bedrooms and living rooms.

Governments are also involved in this. In 2019, Russian company Apis Cor built the largest 3D printed building to date. Two-story building with an area of 640 sq. m is currently home to Dubai Municipality, being the second government building to be 3D printed after the aforementioned Office of the Future.

In Europe, the 3D printed Yhnova House became one of the first residential buildings in the world in 2018 when the Ramdani family moved in. The structure was designed by the University of Nantes using its own proprietary equipment, and the 92 sqm structure was 3D printed. meters took no more than 54 hours.

The next time you hear about 3D printed homes, remember that although it is still an evolving technology, it has shown great results and is already being used around the world.