Great claims have emerged from the field of 3-D-printed architecture, including reports of entire houses, costing barely a few thousand dollars, built robotically, within a day or two, from digital instructions delivered via cellphone app. It almost seems the stuff of science fiction, yet—with growing numbers of “printed” buildings delivered—it’s clear that the technology is rapidly evolving. Less immediately apparent is which parts of these structures are actually printed and just how affordable, sustainable, and quickly producible—from start to finish—such projects are. Is this technology really on the cusp of revolutionizing home-building, putting environmentally sensitive, customizable, high-quality yet swiftly produced houses within reach across the entire economic spectrum, even to underserved populations?
The term 3-D printing refers to a range of digitally guided techniques that lay down sequential layers or deposits of soft or fluid material—such as concrete, polymers, or metals—which fuse together, acquiring hardness, solidity, and strength. In the 1980s, rapid-prototyping techniques emerged for small objects, but it wasn’t until this millennium that 3-D-printing technology took off with applications in fields as diverse as automotive design, biomedical engineering, and architectural model-making. For construction, the approach only gained traction in the U.S. within the past few years.
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