by nanna on 4/27/21, 4:14 PM
Lots of unfair negativity here. I think this is wonderful. HN is full of random hacked-up tech that will never solve the worlds problems but nonetheless give a glimpse at what alternatives could look like. Experiments. This is what this is, and in my opinion it's stunning and I would move into one in an instant.
by noughtme on 4/27/21, 2:47 PM
You might be more familiar with Mapei, the company that developed the material, TECLA. They are tight lipped about the actual ingredients and chemistry, but it seems to rely on soil that naturally contains cement or lime. The structure also requires a spray applied coating to ensure waterproofness.
https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/finally-credible-p...
by newsbinator on 4/27/21, 12:43 PM
In all of these demos, they never show you the resulting bathroom, shower, or kitchen.
It's always "here's a shell we made". I'd like to see the finished house, with fixtures in place and working.
by cheschire on 4/27/21, 2:52 PM
I hope 3D printing homes will take off now that lumber prices are so ridiculous. The sudden cost increases in other materials will now hopefully give 3d printing space to achieve economies of scale.
Imagine homes that are printed with a 20 year life expectancy. Especially in America where I don't know many families that remain in the same house for 20 years. We could start going to the Japanese model of razing the house as an expected part of the land purchase. This has the added benefit of making it significantly easier to keep houses up to modern code.
by m0llusk on 4/27/21, 6:01 PM
It seems strange that there is so much focus on 3D printing structures. Any close look at where the costs go in home construction can easily verify that foundations and services (power, water, sewage) are where the majority of the costs are. It always makes sense to pinch pennies, but starting with one of the smallest line items limits potential improvement. What we really need are ongoing improvements to modular service installations.
This is also a complex cultural problem here as well because even though there are obvious ways of making even comparisons such as time and money spent before receiving a use permit the culture of construction likes to focus on a single innovation while leaving the rest out. There is a modular apartment building near me that took only hours to assemble from the component modules. However, doing that took many months of site preparation and module delivery and after the several hours construction it has still been months to get finishing done, construct sidewalks, and the rest. Without some general agreement about how to measure construction costs and time it is easy to present innovations that are either minor improvements or actually steps backward.
by reversengineer on 4/27/21, 2:32 PM
Excellent idea as a proof of concept, and even beautiful in design. However one cannot help but wonder how structurally sound these materials are. Stress tests are needed to determine how well this would hold up over years of exposure to the elements before being produced en masse. For a sustainable alternative, homes made from repurposed shipping containers are a cost-effective solution for housing. They are made of weather-resistant Steel which, while not rust-proof, will not rot. A single unit can be kitted out and furnished for as little as $25,000, and yields 300+ square feet of space, comparable to a smaller studio apartment. Check out the YouTube Channel "Containing Luxury" which illustrates the sustainability of Container Homes and demonstrates them as a solution to several housing issues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_sclvzg9dMby varispeed on 4/28/21, 11:03 AM
Building a house was never a problem and the huge costs are mostly artificial. The biggest problem is regulation and that you need to have a lot of money to convince local authority to grant a permission to build. It is out of reach for a regular citizen. You can't even build a mud hut without a blessing of a civil servant, and they hate when regular people want to build something as they don't have means to grease their hands.
by DougN7 on 4/27/21, 1:19 PM
Would this survive a rain storm or would it turn to mud? I couldn’t tell from the article.
by ramboldio on 4/27/21, 2:46 PM
Stunning Aesthetics and sustainability characteristics. Unsure whether it is a contender of factory-built prefab homes when it comes to affordability & speed.
30 story building build in 15 days - prefabricated skyscraper:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajlUVSiUvWg
by mushbino on 4/27/21, 3:06 PM
To really solve the housing crisis we'll need to use this device to print some affordable land first.
by trilinearnz on 4/27/21, 11:35 PM
My first thought was "Yeah, but I bet it's not really printed, just transported printed prefabs to the site". Nope, it's actually printed on-site!
Second thought is that the interior looks very Star Trek / Star Wars like.
Some confirmation of the non-leakiness of the walls would be good, but otherwise looks extremely promising as a concept.
by frankbreetz on 4/27/21, 1:29 PM
Cool idea, the lack of discussion of longevity seems pretty glaring. While we would all love to not cause any stress on the environment, we also have to live though heavy rains, snow, and wind. Maybe this structure is designed for dry environment and can with stand a couple of rains a year.
>>The architect studied how a building’s shape could impact its efficiency, in relation to its climate and latitude.
hopefully someone also studied materials the house is made of, because that seems pretty important.
Dirt is a very good insulator of both heat and sound, so maybe they could build something like this a put some sort of shell around it, like siding on current houses, to protect it from weather.
by breck on 4/28/21, 12:15 AM
Wow. This feels like a big deal. Like, 3D printed homes could noticeably change our world in the next 10-30 years. That hadn't really clicked for me until seeing this. Pretty amazing work.
by Tiereven on 4/28/21, 1:53 AM
From a housing aspect, the actual project is a nice, architecturally interesting piece of art. But conceptually it could be a remarkable milestone.
Has this project any relation to similar off-earth construction research?
Could the methods here be extended to lunar regolith or martian soil?
What development is still needed before this can become fully autonomous and able to build many structures before requiring service or additional additives?
by ChucklesNorris on 4/27/21, 10:15 PM
Unfortunately, it's susceptible to a big bad wolf attack.
by ISL on 4/27/21, 2:22 PM
How well do structures like these perform in earthquakes? I can imagine that they might outperform some masonry but be inferior to modern stick-built?
by suyash on 4/27/21, 10:41 PM
by maliker on 4/28/21, 1:48 AM
This brought to mind opensourceecology.org, which was going some work with compressed earth brick buildings. They were getting a lot of attention five or so years ago. Good to see they’re still working towards their goal and are in good company.
by 55555 on 4/27/21, 3:19 PM
I thought this was going to be about... bricks. Houses are traditionally made from earth.
by Gibbon1 on 4/27/21, 8:26 PM
The pictures reminds me of my uncle. He was a VP in charge of the companies real estate holdings. What he said about dealing with architects.
'That's nice but I was thinking of something... square. I'm into right angles'
by 101001001001 on 4/27/21, 5:45 PM
You can take soil and mix it with a little sand and cement and compress it into a brick. It’s called earth blocks. It’s interesting to consider how cheaply one could build structures if they are mostly dirt.
by mort1merp0 on 4/27/21, 7:58 PM
I don't quite understand what they mean by the term “humane” architecture.
I see that is has low carbon footprint, is made of local materials. But is that what they are defining as "humane" architecture?
by gimmeThaBeet on 4/27/21, 11:43 PM
I see that WASP stands for World's Advanced Saving project, but I did have a bit of a chuckle thinking if they wanted to call it VESPA, but that was taken already.
Very cool looking structure.
by swayvil on 4/28/21, 1:27 AM
That's a nice tech. I'd rather have yr basic optimal hemieggoid tho. Too Rococo.
That looks like good substrate for some kind of fat polymer coating.
Needs windows.
How does it stand up to the wet?
by mkaic on 4/27/21, 10:09 PM
This is superb. Obviously it's just a tech demo, but I'm optimistic for 3D printed houses in general in the near future. Exciting stuff!
by travisporter on 4/27/21, 2:53 PM
Domes are ubiquitous throughout sci-fi. Why don't we have a competition to, say print domes or homes autonomously in antarctica or sahara?
by LinuxBender on 4/27/21, 1:25 PM
I like the idea. Have these been put through stress tests? i.e. Wind tunnels, simulated forest fire, floods, earthquake, cold / hot weather, powder actuated projectiles and how do they compare to traditional wooden framed or steel framed homes? What is the thermal insulation rating? I would expect thermals to be pretty good. I've seen similar designs using aircrete [1] and those are fire-resistant. How strong is this compared to aircrete?
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VcdwDRNPzA
by tdhz77 on 4/27/21, 7:42 PM
Looks like LUKE SKYWALKER was born here.
by intrasight on 4/27/21, 3:09 PM
Is beautiful!
by 3dee on 4/27/21, 2:40 PM
It seems to be a mixture of clay, salt, rice fibers and lime.
So I guess the lime prevents erosion.
by Black101 on 4/27/21, 11:54 PM
I have seen 3D printed homes before... raw earth is a lot misleading though
by alexvoda on 4/27/21, 2:43 PM
It looks like sea urchins.
by epx on 4/27/21, 2:56 PM
Remembers the Terrafoam of Mannah short story. Hope it is not a sign…
by mbgerring on 4/27/21, 3:22 PM
Every one of these obnoxious mud huts I’ve ever seen are single story, on like 10 acres of land, in a car-dependent rural area. More people living like this would worsen every current issue we face with environmental sustainability.
by 29athrowaway on 4/27/21, 8:28 PM
If you like this, look up "superadobe".
by Oktokolo on 4/27/21, 1:31 PM
Looks, like they where real careful to not include any technical detail that would explain, how they manage to get that buildings stable and rain proof...
Probably bullshit.
by whall6 on 4/27/21, 6:38 PM
I want a dirt house
by ChucklesNorris on 4/27/21, 10:15 PM
Unfortunately, it's susceptible to the big bad wolf.
by owenversteeg on 4/29/21, 4:33 PM
The interesting thing with all these alternative construction methods is that they end up having much larger costs in one way or another. I'm a huge fan of "alternative living" (lived in a boat I built myself for years) but even I can't convince myself to build a home with one of these alternative methods (shipping container, 3D printing, compressed earth block, adobe, wattle and daub, concrete block, etc.) First there's the permitting process. Then there's the construction costs. Then there's the safety aspect (many of these homes are a disaster with earthquakes/fire/water issues.)
An underappreciated thing is how easy having straight walls makes construction. Having lived in a boat with curved walls, I would never consider a land home with curved walls. The beauty of the curve does NOT make it worth it, unless you plan to hire someone at great expense to do all the work for you. Yes, it's that bad, your 4 day cabinet project will become 4 weeks in no time. Instead of being able to simply plop in premade components (windows, benches, cabinets, beds, etc etc) you'll now need to custom build absolutely everything. Even the parts that seem simple are not. Laying flooring in a square room is simple enough. In a small curved room, you'll have to cut a ton of pieces with a strange curve. Then you have to lay them to meet up with the curved walls. It's a nightmare. You're also negating part of the eco-friendly aspect, by the way, when you have to discard huge amounts of curvy pieces of material (trust me, you'll cut large pieces wrong more than a few times.) That's one reason why I find this 3D printing clay project quite cool - you can simply 3D print benches, cabinets, walls etc to nestle right up to the curve.
I'd be very curious to hear from anyone here who tried to save money while building a home, but I would suspect that the answer is to go small and minimize labor. Even minimizing labor, you're going to need permits, a foundation, electrical, HVAC, a roof, etc, so it's not going to be nearly as cheap as you think.
If anyone is interested in a good cost breakdown of house construction costs, I like this one: https://www.nahbclassic.org/generic.aspx?sectionID=734&gener...
You'll notice that the sum total of framing + exterior finishes (framing, exterior wall finishes, roof, windows and doors, etc) come out to around 30% of the construction cost of a new home, or around 18.5% of the total cost of a new home. So this machine can save you at maximum 30% of the construction cost. The rest is pretty much fixed: landscaping+deck+driveway = 6.8%, interior finishing = 25.4%, plumbing/electrical/HVAC = 15%, foundation = 12%, permits/sewer/fees = 6%.
Which gets to my last point: the issue with technologies like these is that people compare their best-case projections for one part of the system to the total costs of the existing solution (traditional stick built construction) in the same way people make arguments for Gadgetbahn type projects. You see that the average new single family home costs $485k and suddenly a $50k shipping container home looks really appealing. But that's ignoring two things - one, the costs that are not included in that $50k, and two, that you're comparing a projection to reality. Compare apples to apples, and you'll realize that a stick-built kit for several hundred square feet can be had for $29k: https://allwoodoutlet.com/LARGE-CABIN-KITS/Allwood-Avalon-54...
by xyst on 4/27/21, 10:49 PM
construction workers about to be automated out
by barry27 on 4/27/21, 1:02 PM
Does it have plumbing? Wiring? Or did they 3D print a shelter.
by blitz_skull on 4/27/21, 3:09 PM
> needed no materials to be transported to the site
Has glass doors...
To be sure, this is really cool—breakthrough even. But the headlines are just factually inaccurate.
by surgeryres on 4/27/21, 3:09 PM
Yet another example of the over-hype of “3D Printing”. Yes it’s neat that they collected some local dirt, mixed it with some non-locally sourced water and binder, and poured it into an extruder run on some kind of non locally sourced energy, then sprayed it with some protective coating - it baffles me that people see this as a possible mainstream building technique. Running electrical, plumbing, air conditioning etc through this structure is doable but much harder, as the expectations of these niceties have evolved with modern construction and need easy access and hiding with things like dry wall.
This almost reads as an onion article with the headline “brilliant scientists figure out how to overcomplicate the construction of mud huts similar to our earliest human ancestors”.