First 3D-Printed Neighborhood Now Has First 3D-Printed Houses

Shacks are informal housing put together on an as-needed basis with whatever people are able to find

(Web Desk) - A planned 3D-printed neighborhood has its first completed houses in rural Mexico. The houses are made with a huge 3D printer that’s 33 feet long, and the project was delayed for a few months while the machinery was held up in customs by understandably puzzled officials.

Residents are moving into 500-square-foot homes with two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room space, and an indoor bathroom with plumbing. They re all built in one sweep of the 3D printer, ICON s Vulcan II, which pipes a special concrete mixture to form exterior and interior walls. The new homes will withstand local weather in a way their builders say is new among 3D printed home technology, which has largely not been tested in the "real world."

The international nonprofit New Story, working in partnership with ICON, works to reduce not just homelessness, but “survival mode” living around the world. Researchers estimate that up to 1.6 billion people around the world are housing-insecure or live in inadequate housing, like the shacks that New Story is hoping to replace in the rural Mexican community where it’s 3D-printing houses.

Shacks are informal housing put together on an as-needed basis with whatever people are able to find, and they usually lack amenities that are considered basic human rights. Residents told Fast Company they were used to placing buckets around every time it rains because of the amount of water that comes through their makeshift roofs, and most haven’t ever had indoor plumbing.