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Startup Havelar built Portugal’s first 3D printed home using COBOD’s popular printing system.
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The walls of the two-bedroom, 861-square-foot home were printed in 18 hours.
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The Portugal-based startup says it can build faster and cheaper than conventional construction.
If companies like Portugal-based Havelar have their way, the future of affordable housing will look like perfectly stacked strands of spaghetti (as in, they’d be 3D printed).
Printing-construction startup Havelar says it can build a new home in less than two months while pricing it significantly below market, all with the help of a robotic construction printer.
It may sound like an impossible claim, but its latest project — and Portugal’s first 3D printed home — has made its case.
Havelar completed an 861-square-foot, two-bedroom home in Porto, Portugal, in late April.
Following the success of its project, the startup is now touting its ability to build houses for 1,500 euros per square meter, or about $150 per square foot.
That prices its new dwelling at about $130,000 — half the median cost of similarly sized homes in Porto, according to data from Spanish real estate company Idealista.
Like Havelar, proponents of printer-built homes have been making lofty promises about the futuristic tech.
Giant automated printers are increasingly being lauded as a way to build high-quality natural disaster-resistant homes faster and cheaper while reducing waste and labor.
However, like any nascent tech, the construction 3D printing industry has been facing growing pains, such as the high cost of printing materials and an underdeveloped workforce.
Printers have limitations, too: Most can only build walls, while the rest of the home has to be completed conventionally.
But printing can significantly slash build time — so much so that the walls of Havelar’s home were printed in 18 hours, according to COBOD, the 3D printer’s manufacturer.
Despite how it sounds, a printer-built home doesn’t have to look unrecognizably futuristic.
Save for the layered-looking walls, a signature of 3D printers, Havelar’s build looks like any new two-bedroom house.
It wouldn’t be a modern home without an open-concept kitchen and dining room.
Like Texas-based Icon’s first luxury printed home, the contrasting colors and textures of the wood finishes and the printer’s cement mix create a contemporary and trendy feel.
But don’t start pulling out money for the downpayment.
Plans to sell the home are “currently unclear,” a spokesperson for COBOD told Business Insider. Havelar did not respond to a request for comment from BI.
If you want to move into an affordable printed home, it might be best to wait for Havelar’s next projects.
Otherwise, be prepared to pay more in the US.
Rodrigo Vilas-Boas, cofounder of Havelar, said in COBOD’s news release that its construction methods would allow first-time homebuyers to acquire their dream home in a good neighborhood for €150,000, about $162,000.
That’s a steep price difference from Lennar and Icon’s upcoming community of 100 3D printed homes near Austin, where the first six units were priced between $476,000 and $566,000.
Even steeper, homes at Icon’s development in Marfa, Texas, a seven-hour drive east, start “in the upper $900,000s,” according to its website.
Read the original article on Business Insider