Monday, March 12, 2018
This cheap 3D-printed home is a start for the 1 billion who lack shelter
The Verge: 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.
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5 comments:
I love reading articles like this about the concrete (no pun intended) applications of newfound technologies that can address real problems of our modern age. As "cool" as it is to print out a perfect replica of the Death Star with a 3-d printer, it takes the power of the cutting edge technology for granted. Applying the concepts of 3-d printing to the real life problem of homelessness and displacement is a terrific marriage of technology, design, and demand. If companies continue to embrace new tech to solve problems in the world, rather than simply enrich themselves, I feel that we will be in a better place in the years to come. Especially considering the staggering weight of issues such as the Syrian refugee crisis and Global Climate change, innovation will likely prove absolutely vital to our progression in this challenging world. I hope more companies start tackling issues through design and tech, and if we all do our part, we will find ourselves better off for it.
I agree with Patrick that it is awesome to see when new technology does well for the world. I think it really important to look at this intersectionality between design and humanitarianism because this is a way for the theatre community to help out the larger community in a new way. Though I don’t know how many scene shops use 3D printers, Technical Directors and 3D printer fabricators use the same skills. I think sometimes it is hard to see the connection between someone like a material scientist, a public policy major, and a theatre technician but articles like these make it pretty clear. Technology leads to innovation leads to helping others. The technology (3D printer and testing out what is the right material to use) mixes with communication (the charity helping ICON get into the communities it needs to serve). The technician is like a niche material scientist while the public policy student and production stage manager have somewhat similar skills. These are things that stage and production managers and technical directors all use in completely different contexts. Even though I don’t ever plan on taking a class in the engineering school, this article has shown the intersectionally of the programs offered at CMU in a new and different way. Though I plan on doing theatre for most of my life, I do find it comforting to know that I have skills that can be easily transferred.
This is such an interesting article. the technology of 3-D printing and using different materials to do so is so cool and using it for such a good cause is such a good idea. The idea of being able to build a house in 24 hours is crazy and being able to provide this for people in need is a great idea. I do have a lot of questions though for how the house will stand and work though as it doesn't necessarily "save" the housing crisis in the world. Just giving people homes doesn't solve the real issues of why they don't have them in the first place and these homes may not be the best suited for their living conditions I just have a lot of different questions for this going forward but am interested to see what they will do. The idea at the end where they are talking about building these on other planets and in space as that has been an issue for Nasa for years and I think may be a real use for this in the not to distant future.
I saw a video about this machine a little while ago and it is so cool that you can just create something once on the computer and have it be generated hundreds of times in real life. This is the type of usage of technology that gives me hope and prevents from completely freaking out over a robot apocalypse. Its amazing when people use their talents to help other people and I am excited to see how far this 3-D printed house can go. I do think Mattox brings up a good point when he mentions the living conditions within these houses but I think this machine is the step in the right direction, especially when it is taken into account that, without this house, living conditions would be even worst because there would be no house.
I also find space exploration amazing and I really hope that it occurs during our lifetime. However, I am aware that one of the biggest problems facing space travel is finding raw materials to create livable situations. I think that this technology can become the new way that humans build with excess materials and labor in space.
This is one of the main reason people have been trying to develop cheaper large format 3D printers and it seems that this has worked with the ICON method of 3D printing houses. “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.” The technology has improved were we can both print larger and cheaper things in 3D, “Using the Vulcan printer, ICON can print an entire home for $10,000 and plans to bring costs down to $4,000 per house. “It’s much cheaper than the typical American home,” Ballard says. It’s capable of printing a home that’s 800 square feet, a significantly bigger structure than properties pushed by the tiny home movement, which top out at about 400 square feet.” 3D printing is the future.
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