Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa October 2016 | Page 36

3D PRINTER

Building the Future

Houses can be designed and printed instantly with 3D printing
BY DREW HOOK

C

ompanies around the globe are using 3D
printing to create structures that are both safe
and cost effective. It’s revolutionizing how we
live, and it could allow us to provide housing for our
poorest citizens.
While 3D printing is excelling in many different
fields, it has been rather low key in the one field in
which you may assume it would be rather prominent
and well known: Construction. While developments
in that area are not scarce, 3D printing is not as
famous for building houses as it is building organs
and human cells.
3-D printing for construction is gaining in
popularity in China, in particular, where builders
have also constructed a six-story apartment building
using the technology. While advances in 3-D printing
stateside offer architects and developers an interesting,
vertically integrated design and production tool, the
technology has yet to achieve wide-spread adoption
in construction projects, instead focusing mostly on
parts and components.
Cost is a primary reason for the small-scale focus,
and questions of job site supply logistics and general

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OCTOBER 2016 SA Real Estate Investor

assembly labor will likely need to be addressed for
3-D printing to be seriously considered in any kind
of production builder or commercial construction
capacity. How close do 3-D printers need to be to the
job site in order to be useful? Who will operate them,
and how might they impact project management
decisions? Those questions are only beginning to be
explored.
Modular construction is one opportunity for 3-D
printing to scale up. Last year, architectural firm
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill partnered with the
U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, housing manufacturer Clayton Homes,
and the College of Architecture and Design at
the University of Tennessee to create a panelized
enclosure and companion vehicle, both 3-D printed,
that share and store renewable energy to stay off-grid
during periods of peak demand.
Proof of concept isn’t necessarily a proof of economics,
however, and it may be that 3-D printing will offer
more value to the construction industry — and
thus experience greater investment — by providing
machining and parts manufacturing to support crews
www.reimag.co.za