The World's First 3D-Printed Village Is Coming To Latin America This Summer (dwell.com) 34
MikeChino writes: Yves Behar, ICON, and New Story just unveiled plans to build the world's first 3D-printed community this summer in Latin America. The project will provide over 50 homes for impoverished families who typically live on less than $200 per month. ICON has developed a portable printer that will print the walls of each home in just 24 hours with nearly zero waste. "Each site-specific house will feature an outdoor kitchen and an expanded outdoor area for raising chickens and crops," reports Dwell. "The open-plan interior living areas are optimized for natural ventilation and flexibility. The 3D printer will allow for built-in elements ranging from countertops in the kitchen and bathroom to seating and shelving."
ICON has made a video about the plans with mockups of what the homes will look like.
ICON has made a video about the plans with mockups of what the homes will look like.
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FDM printer with concrete (Score:4, Insightful)
This just seems so strange. It's only a rendered video of the concept without any information about the integrity of the building or even a demo of the concrete pouring.Seems like something meant to drum up investment more than anything else.
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Here's a video [youtube.com] about the test print they did in Austin, Texas last year.
According to this article [curbed.com], they have a newer model printer than the one they used in Austin, so this is probably a PR move to try and get people to buy the printers.
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I see, there's still a team inserting different elements into the walls while its being built and isn't completely standalone 3d printing. Would be cool to see them implement different infill strategies and maybe remove the need for workers adding metal reinforcement. Glad to see it's real.
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They'd still need workers to feed materials into the machine and get it running. It's a 3D concrete printer, not a general-purpose AI. It's just a tool that does one thing. Adding in other features such as adding reinforcing rods as it goes would overcomplicate the design and be a huge point of failure. It's better and more reliable to have a simpler 3D printer that does one material and use human labor for the rest. It's just a tool that reduces labor by pouring concrete in 3D shapes, not some magical thin
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Politicians in Europe and the US have tied up house making with laws that get in the way of things like this.
Low cost housing (Score:1)
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Sit at home in the nice printed house talking about how a house had to be constructed by workers.
Now a robot arrives over some land thats ready for printing on and a house is printed.
The keys get given to people waiting for a house and they move into the printed house.
STL? (Score:2)
These folks should release miniature house STL files. It'd be fun to print it out to see how it would look and you'd end up with a pretty interesting scale model when you're done.
This is a revolution! (Score:2)
Previously, there was no known way for people to build housing on their own. Thank goodness this company from Austin will be able to come in and build units which will be completely maintainable by local people using local materials! I'm just super surprised that they were unable to find any people in Austin who wanted this housing! I guess Austin is just not cutting-edge enough for this kind of thing, their loss.
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Re: This is a revolution! (Score:2)
No known way for people to build housing on their own.... I cannot tell if your kidding.
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No known way for people to build housing on their own.... I cannot tell if your kidding.
Just to be clear, I'm totally snarking. This kind of scenario is basically remote wealthy people imaging a solution which entirely ignores the problem. Basically nobody in the world is homeless because they literally cannot find a means of constructing a home, but a lot of people are homeless because their local systems prevent them from constructing a home where they wish to. A lot of the world's population lives in homes which they have no legal ownership right over, so someone could come in tomorrow a
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*Consumer* 3D printing hype died years ago. Researchers are using 3D printers to generate working organs for transplants, high-tech ones for use in space mission and industrial-grade ones for custom parts and prototyping.
The issues with home 3D printing is that you can't compete with mass-produced cheap plastic, so there's little use for it. There are plenty of industrial applications.
Low cost ? (Score:1)
With houses made from concrete... Wouldn't on-place materials be preferable over technology tools transplanted on site to use high pollutant supply coming from far producer factory ?
if you have good dirt (Score:2)
(Might not work well in my region of wet clay soil.)
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Talk to your politicians. They're the ones requiring essentially custom-made, labor-intensive houses rather than assembled from plug-and-play modules from factories (and I don't mean mobile homes.)
great idea (Score:2)
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Latin America. That narrow it down. (Score:1)
So it's not on the planet Earth, just specifically in Latin America.
I live here, so it will be build right next door to me, or no more than 8.000 km anyway.