3D-Printed Public Housing Unveiled in France (reuters.com)

Researchers have unveiled what they billed as the world's first 3D-printed house to serve as a home in the French city of Nantes, with the first tenants due to move in by June. From a report: Academics at the University of Nantes who led the project said it was the first house built in situ for human habitation using a robot 3D-printer. The robot, known as BatiPrint3D, uses a special polymer material that should keep the building insulated effectively for a century. It took BatiPrint3D around 18 days to complete its part of the work on the house - creating hollow walls that were subsequently filled with concrete for insulation. The 95 square meter (1000 square feet), five-room house will be allocated to a local family which qualifies for social housing, authorities said.

Comments

The only thing you care about

[Anonymous Coward]

The pictures and short construction movie:
https://www.3ders.org/articles...

Re:The only thing you care about

[thinkwaitfast]

Why no use a robot to stack blocks? Or even better, the future tenants to give them something to do?

Russia Russia Russia!

[Anonymous Coward]

Russia beat France, again

I'm an American

[rsilvergun]

and when I tell people I'd want to give free housing to the homeless they look at me like I've got lobsters crawling out of my ears. Thing is, unless you're gonna let the poor die in the streets (and do terrible things when they show up at your neighborhood to loot because they're dying) or you're gonna ship them off to gulags then giving the homeless housing is cheaper than the current patchwork nightmare of social services and short term prison.

Re:I'm an American

[apoc.famine]

There's research behind this too. Of all ways to try to solve homelessness, it turns out that the most effective one is giving people homes. Why? (And to head off snark, we're talking about people being self-sufficient and able to hold down a job and rent an apartment as the end goal.) Because you can't solve the rest of your problems if you're living on the street. You can't get mail, you can't get treatment, you can't reliably field phone calls.

Once you give the homeless a place to stay, suddenly they have all of those. They have an address to put on a resume. Social workers can come visit. Their mental stress goes way down (mental issues are often the cause of homelessness and also exacerbated by it) and that in turn reduces the need to turn to substance abuse. All of that puts people in a much better position to find work and get off the streets.

Sure, there will always be people who just can't get off the streets, but for most, it's doable with support.

An address and a place to sleep at night are bootstraps. No reason to deny people those, when it's near impossible to put their life back together without them.

So slower than traditional building methods?

[ravenscar]

It took the machine 18 days to complete its work. The article was pretty low on information, but it sounds like its work consisted of something roughly equivalent to framing (no electrical, plumbing, insulation, finish work, etc.). A regular crew could frame a 1000 square foot home much faster. I'm seeing things like this on other sites: "On average, crew of three experienced carpenters and two helpers able to complete framing of a new 1,900 ft2 – 2,100 ft2 two story simple house in 7 – 8 days." (rempros.com).

This is cool and all and I'm always glad to see investment in promising new tech, but it doesn't sound like it's any sort of end-all solution to housing problems.

1,000 words

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Hard to believe an article like this wouldn't have a link to a single picture. Here's an article from last year with some pictures and more details of the process.

I'm from a town in Germany

[Dirk Becher]

We have basic unemployment aid which also includes rent for a moderately sized habitation. We still have homeless. Every couple of weeks a social worker drops by and asks whether they wouldn't want to move to something more permanent. It has been three years since someone took the offer.

Re:What?

[Nos.]

It's essentially an ICF house, which are typically very well insulated. http://buildblock.com/how-to-b...

An earlier one, fills in cement

[kbahey]

Here is an an earlier 3D printed house, from a year ago.

Seems that the Russian one lays out cement directly, rather than a polymer to be filled later with cement (by humans), as the French one does.