In a world’s first, Project Milestone has become a trendsetter for a 3D printed concrete housing project.
The houses will be built in the Netherlands city of Eindhoven over the next five years, with the first, a single-floor house to be ready for occupation in the first half of 2019.
The other four houses have been planned as multi-storeyed houses. All five houses will be let out to tenants, according to the buyer and real estate manager Vesteda.
Similar to conventional construction, these 3D printed concrete dwellings will also be built to existing building regulations. In terms of design, the houses look like erratic blocks on a green landscape with the complicated and irregular shapes of the buildings to be achieved through 3D printing.
The building process will be preceded by serious research on concrete printing innovations; the houses will be built in sequence so that lessons learned in one house can be applied to the next.
While the building elements of the first house will be printed by the concrete printer at the university, the project will eventually see the entire construction process including the 3D printing happening at the construction site.
3D printing technology is making inroads into the building industry, and is expected to be a game changer in terms of its ability to construct to almost any shape, complete work faster, and execute complex and challenging designs.
The ease of construction, which will help support customisation, reduced costs, and enhanced sustainability are important outcomes of the adoption of this technology in the building industry.
