Print me a home , please
The residential construction industry is undergoing a renaissance , incorporating the principles of additive manufacturing to rethink how homes are made and sold .
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BY POORNIMA APTE
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SQ4D nder ordinary circumstances , a three-bedroom , two-bath house hitting the market would not have landed headlines . But a Riverhead , New York , home made news in 2021 for one special reason : It was primarily constructed by a 3D printer .
3D printing involves digitally designing an object and creating build instructions on a digital file . A printer then follows these instructions to construct a 3D equivalent of the designed object by depositing or extruding material layer by layer . Because the process adds material systematically , it is also called “ additive ” manufacturing .
3D printing a home follows these same basic principles : A printhead , operating on a gantry , moves back and forth along a