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Contour Crafting - Extrude-a-House
lww writes "An article in New Scientist discusses the work of Behrokh Khoshnevis at the University of Southern California to design and build a fully automated robot that performs Contour Crafting, his name for a process to extrude successive layers of semi-fluid building mixtures like concrete to create entire structures. In the article, he says 'The goal is to be able to completely construct a one-story, 2000-square foot home on site, in one day and without using human hands.' by 2005. I'm pretty jazzed at the potential to construct buildings with highly curved/creative contours that would be impossible using current construction techniques."
Boy, and I thought houses in housing developments were too cookie-cutter now.
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I am moving to Mars where they still build houses the old fashion way. Wait... what? ..... Aww crap
This may be able to construct a house in one day, but I can't see getting this gadget set up in that time. This thing is huge!
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At first I read that as "Extrude-a-Horse." I was picturing some unfortunate horse being turned to goo as it was extruded through a small pinhole. Ick.
ex'trude v. ex'trud'ed, ex'trud'ing, ex'trudes
v. tr. 1. To push or thrust out.
Boy, the trolls are going to have a field day with this one.
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Would anyone ever be proud to say "a robot shat my home"? These things will likely replace trailer-houses: the Cletus Delroy's of the future can say "Hey Maw! We're movin' to a brand spankin' new droid-turd!"
But what about windows? Having really contoured surfaces dont do so well if you want to put in a window, custom glass costs a boat load....
Not to mention they make awkward living spaces inside; it just seems that boxes work so much better in house design, although I would love curvature in the corner points in my rooms (a nice, soft, apple-like look).
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Try getting something like this pushed past the trade unions. You might wake up with a horse head under your sheets.
Th
So it will only take a day to build a house, and with no human hands...but then, you still have to build a big gantry crane over the site, and set up the robot. This thing isn't going to do in-wall plumbing and electricity either. There would still be a LOT of work after the robot did its union minimum.
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Try getting something like this pushed past the trade unions. You might wake up with a horse head under your sheets.
Or during the night one of the house-crapping bots extrudes an entire 64-unit condo into your bedroom.
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It looks like this sort of technology is actually targeted at just the "smaller" buildings, like houses.
It would seem that this is because it is essentially a "print-a-house" device, which will be limited by the size of the "printer" as well as the type of materials that can be used for "ink." No steel buildings here, only ceramics, some plastics, or adobe-type products.
One thing that struck me funny is that they cited "construction of structures on Moon and Mars" as a possible application, but I simply can't see how it'd be a better option than, say, inflatables.
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This would be nice for a home with no infratructure. How does it tie in to sewer lines, electric grids, etc? This isn't even mentioning teh internal infrastructure - all teh 14guage wiring, the three way switches, the copper feed and pvc drain pipes, etc.
Also, how does it get all the city bureaucrats on site in one day to do all the
This sounds like the flying cars we were all promised.
Sure it's cool that a robot might build a house in a day, but would you really want to live in it?
Personally, I'd rather have my house built by 100 Amish carpenters over the course of one year.
I may be a Luddite, in this respect, but I'm also a big believer in TLC.
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Negative! There's an alternative building process called cobbing that allows for free-form walls. A group called Cobworks is currently building a cob house in Mexico that's got a number of curved walls.
Curved walls are nowhere near impossible. And placing windows in them is nowhere near impossible either. Furniture and home decoration obviously also has to be bought to fit or placed properly in rooms (i.e. no six foot long paintings hung on a curved wall).
If you want to see some beautiful uses of curves and non-right-angles in architecture, check out the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA. It is truly beautiful, and the kind of thing which could not possibly have been built even 15 years ago because the computer modeling technology wasn't there. But that is a place you go to spend a few hours once a month, not to live there, and it was built with plenty of open space around it, not packed in like a house.
But I think this house-creating technology is cool and I'm sure it will find uses in more spread-out areas where there is room to be creative.
The logical next step is P2P architecture, right?
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The animation shows the machine making a framed structure on a prepared lot. Stick framing can already be done in a day (albeit with a few sets of human hands involved). The thing that takes time in building a house is the wiring, plumbing, hvac, and finishing.
I don't see much future for this until they can automate some of these functions.
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The desire to have curved pool walls, which cost a fortune in concrete formwork would be where this could make in-roads if it were able to work around reinforcing steel(unreinforced concrete isn't that crash hot for any serious structural works, especially in any areas of seismicity).
Curved walls may well look pretty, but are a nuisance to work around if you are trying to fit beds, couches, tables against them. One of the bonuses of straight walls iwth square corners.
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this could completely change the way things are done. As I see it this machine could build a dog house for (a totally wild guess) $50,000, or a big honking ranch style house for $65,000. The expense is still going to be in site preparation and getting the equipment in place. No surprise, right?
I think that once designers get a handle on what this machine can do that they will come up with ways to build houses that will seriously cut down on finish work and systems installation. What about cast in place air ducting, and cast in place conduits? Finish work would be a snap. Believe me, when you hire an experienced stucco crew you'd better be ready for them because you go to lunch and they'll have the job done before you get back. That stuff can be done a lot faster than the vapor barrier-rigid insulation, siding, paint system.
And as far as insulation goes, what' stopping them from extruding that also? Air entrained concrete with those little expanded poly beads is great insulation! If you want to go farther, it wouldn't be hard to cast in little notches to hang interior sheating and then pump insulation behind that.
I spent a summer with a fist full of rebar ties in one hand and a tool in the other, and it wasn't a lot of fun. If you can trade a lot of little hand labor, for a couple of days of guys with heavy equipment, it might be worth it. Who knows.
One thing's for sure, building houses this way isn't going to be done by ma & pop construction outfits.
My experience with concrete is very small, but this could be big, if it isn't a scam and we can get the building codes people to buy it.
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Man, don't go in the bathroom! I just "extruded a house."
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