3D-printed homes?

Caporegime
Joined
28 Jan 2003
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England
A solution to the housing crisis?

Would you live in one? I certainly would.

crdig2K.jpg


Food, water, and shelter are basic human needs, but 1.2 billion people in the world live without adequate housing, according to a report by the World Resources Institute’s Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. Today at SXSW, an Austin-based startup will unveil its approach to combat that deficiency by using low-cost 3D printing as a potential solution.

ICON has developed a method for printing a single-story 650-square-foot house out of cement in only 12 to 24 hours, a fraction of the time it takes for new construction. If all goes according to plan, a community made up of about 100 homes will be constructed for residents in El Salvador next year. The company has partnered with New Story, a nonprofit that is vested in international housing solutions. “We have been building homes for communities in Haiti, El Salvador, and Bolivia,” Alexandria Lafci, co-founder of New Story, tells The Verge.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/12/17101856/3d-printed-housing-icon-shelter-housing-crisis#comments
 
Looks rather nice, i would.

Not sure it would do much for the UK housing crisis and you still need to buy land to build on.
 
Aye I've seen them before, don't see why not if it's using the same amount of materials.

Can only see it happening on 'new' housing estates though as you'd need the kit to print the damn thing
 
There's lots of evidence that shortage of supply is not actually the real issue behind our housing crisis. I've certainly never believed it. A quick walk around London's docklands will show anyone that there's plenty of homes out there. http://www.ourcity.london/comment/reduce-house-prices-now/

So I don't think this will help a jot. What we need to do is make landlord'ing harder and less attractive as an investment, make owning second/third/fourth homes unattractive through heavy tax burdens, pass laws that protect private tenants better, scrap our outdated council tax and make it a percentage of the property's value.. gosh there's so much stuff I can think of off the top of my head it's a wonder our MPs can't manage to :rolleyes:
 
would absolutely live in one, but not a solution for the uk. But then again if I could, i would buy a cheap bit of land and put a tiny house on it, something along these lines.

Instead in a little over a month will hopefully be completing on a stupidly expensive flat.



there's already so many cheap house manufacturing techniques adding another doesn't solve the issue. Of planning regs, both what can be built and where. Which means any land that gets planning regs for residential goes up in value many times over and then you are pretty much forced to build an expensive house on it.

if I was still in my early 20s I would live in a motorhome on the side off the road and save the what would be rent money. once you start looking into it, there's surprising amount of people allready doing this, which you just generally don't notice.
 
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What we need to do is make landlord'ing harder and less attractive as an investment, make owning second/third/fourth homes unattractive through heavy tax burdens, pass laws that protect private tenants better, scrap our outdated council tax and make it a percentage of the property's value.. gosh there's so much stuff I can think of off the top of my head it's a wonder our MPs can't manage to :rolleyes:

Housing crisis is due to nimblys and house developers preferring to build 4/5 bed detached houses instead of starter homes.

Preach Brothers!

Looks about the same size at my studio flat. And I'd certainly take that option against living with people above, below and either side! Not to mention paying 700p/m for the privilege.

Along with all the other challenges, I think you'd struggle buying a plot of land that small w/ planning permission. Shame really, I could easily imagine little communities of these dotted around.
 
I wonder if you can print a house using PLA. Which is completely renewable and made from plants :D

if I was still in my early 20s I would live in a motorhome on the side off the road and save the what would be rent money. once you start looking into it, there's surprising amount of people allready doing this, which you just generally don't notice.

Or buy some land which doesn't have planning permission and park a large motor-home on it. You just need to move around every few months so it's "mobile".
 
I wonder if you can print a house using PLA. Which is completely renewable and made from plants :D



Or buy some land which doesn't have planning permission and park a large motor-home on it. You just need to move around every few months so it's "mobile".
you cant do that in the uk, you can only live on land you own for 30 days a year. unlike the rest of the eu.
 
Those wouldn't work in most of the UK, they are tiny and make poor use of the space. You need infrastructure around new housing as well.

On the topic of making council tax property value based thats just not going to work.

Just because you have a £500k flat doesn't mean you doesn't mean you don't live in some **** hole in London and have very little money. My parents have a house that was worth £30k when they bought it and is now worth £300k. They haven't suddenly become super wealthy as a result of housing prices rising. If there was a simple solution to this it would have already been implemented.
 
if I was still in my early 20s I would live in a motorhome on the side off the road and save the what would be rent money. once you start looking into it, there's surprising amount of people allready doing this, which you just generally don't notice.

They're called gypsies. Nobody likes them.
 
On the topic of making council tax property value based thats just not going to work.
Not on it's own. But most importantly it'd help the daft opinion that most homeowners have that in it's a good thing when their house increases in price. If your council tax went up because of it, it'd soon change that. It's more of a small preventative measure anyway, plenty of countries do it and it works/helps. And it's a darn sight better than our ludicrous council tax banding which was done by paper shuffling morons in the seventies who half the time didn't even bother getting out of the car to count the bedrooms in a property :rolleyes:
 
you cant do that in the uk, you can only live on land you own for 30 days a year. unlike the rest of the eu.

God I hate this country sometimes.

Those wouldn't work in most of the UK, they are tiny and make poor use of the space. You need infrastructure around new housing as well.

I presume you're talking from the perspective of London? Looking at the picture alone, you could probably fit 4 of these on a plot that 4 bedroom house would sit on (outside of London). And yes, housing needs infrastructure, not sure what your point is there.

Partly agree with making council tax based on property value, it needs to be partly means tested as well.
 
I presume you're talking from the perspective of London? Looking at the picture alone, you could probably fit 4 of these on a plot that 4 bedroom house would sit on (outside of London). And yes, housing needs infrastructure, not sure what your point is there.

They are single story so how many people would want to live in a tiny thing like this especially if you are going to be squeezing them together tightly to use as little space as possible. My point about the infrastructure is that you have to pay to get things like internet, water, electricity into new developments. If no one is making any money from these then where is the incentive. Roads? Parking? Stick enough super cheap housing together and you just risk ending up with a complete **** hole with the dregs of society in it as well.

I think this sort of thing is a great idea for certain areas of the world but not for the UK necessarily.

I think something more akin to the Huf-Haus is what we should be aiming for here. Build the house in easy to assemble kits but ultimately still proper houses.
 
Would work in many parts of the uk, the land just needs giving to the people for free, never gonna happen though to much greed in the world.
 
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