[ogre_codes]

There are better ways to build affordable housing already.

You make a factory that builds prefabricated panels then deliver them onsite. With prefab, you don’t need to transport an expensive piece of equipment to remote parts of the world and have onsite experts there to supervise and repair it. You don’t have to deal with tear down and setup of the equipment at every site and installers have predictable channels to install any power/ water infrastructure.

I suspect the reason this is popular is more because they are aesthetically pleasing and use new/ special technology than anything else.

[CraigJPerry]

There’s something cool in the idea of a community all building their own dwellings - even if it meant hiring a fancy machine to do the hard work while they all chipped to prep the ground the plumbing, fed the machine clay or whatever.

It’s not something you could measure on a spreadsheet but it’d be immensely cool to be a part of that, maybe even somewhere remote where you don’t really want to bring much more than absolutely necessary.

[blacksmith_tb]

True, though you still need to transport all those panels to the site and assemble them - one interesting aspect here is that the materials are (mostly) present. That doesn't make for much savings of emissions for a single house, but if you built ten at once... I also wonder if you couldn't carve out a basement/cellar and use the dirt displaced to build the house over it, that'd provide storage.

[romwell]

>There are better ways to build affordable housing already.

Who'd think that a proof-of-concept doesn't yet compete with existing solutions?

>I suspect the reason this is popular is more because they are aesthetically pleasing

We are talking about places people can live in. Aesthetics matter.

The ability to produce something aesthetically pleasing on the cheap and at scale matters.

There is a reason Soviet architecture is the butt of so many jokes. They were rapidly building post-war, with the idea that those buildings will be replaced in two decades.

Many of those buildings are still there.

[brudgers]

Consider what the Soviets replaced in terms of housing. The people who moved in weren’t giving up a dacha life.

Same holds for US housing projects. People came from cold water tenaments, share cropper shacks with an outhouse out back, and migrant farm labor camps.

They represent a huge improvement in shelter despite their lack of appeal to people of means

[romwell]

My point wasn't that it sucked; my point was that the architecture of ex-USSR countries is still dominated by that style even when the countries moved on.

So there's value in affordable housing with long-term aesthetics. It affects generations of people beyond those whose lives are immediately improved.

[bakatubas]

The first computers filled up an entire room and look where we are now...

This is a proof of concept and surely it will be refined to make more efficient construction processes.

[vkou]

> The first computers filled up an entire room and look where we are now...

So, in how many decades do you project that a house will cost $300, and will provide shelter for half-a-million people?

Why compare to computing, which is a discipline that's less to a century old, when you can compare to any other millenia-old-industry, some of which have seen revolutionary improvements, some of which have seen minor incremental improvements, and some of which have seen serious cost and/or quality regressions over that period of time?

[dalbasal]

This is besides the point, to the extent that it's not just wrong.

The goal here is obviously to build an experimental building, and isn't even explicitly related to affordable housing. Meanwhile, this building method produces a different building to the one you suggest. It's an irrelevant comparison for that reason alone, but there are lots. What if the factory is far away? The fact that transport needs are totally different is actually useful.

Also, what's with this static mindset? Don't you think there are no new building methods to be had?

Personally, I'm quite interested in these printed structures. They're not ready for major use yet, maybe they won't ever be. Practicability will (or won't) be proven when large projects are attempted. You need small projects first.

TLDR, of course they could have just parked an RV there. That's not the point.

[Aunche]

From what I understand, prefab homes are only economical in remote areas, like if you want to give off the grid. If you just want a new regular house in the suburbs, traditional construction is going to be cheaper. To be clear, I'm talking about the US. China is successful with prefab, but they also have millions of people moving away from the countryside every year, so economies of scale work in their favor.

[brudgers]

Lots of people in the US live in trailers and mobile homes. Cars too.

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

Not only are there better ways to build affordable housing, there are better ways to do exactly what the article is describing.

A buddhist monastery in my area managed to build beautiful structures using bricks made from local raw earth. No fancy giant 3D printers necessary.

[GLGirty]

Do you have have links for monastery? I have so many questions... how big is it? what does it look like? I love the idea of earth as a building material, and I'd love to see what the state of the art is now. Do we, as a species, possess the skill to build a Guastavino vault as good as a century ago in New York? Or something as pleasing Cuba's National Art Schools?

3d printing a building might be a cursed problem. If it doesn't scale past single-family dwellings, it's useless. Mo sprawl, mo problems. How could this tech scale up to the size of an apartment building? If you have a big crane, prefab panels are certainly cheaper and faster. Maybe if you built in the style of Agadez Mosque, with the scaffold incorporated into the structure, the robots could climb as they build. That seems to rule out toothpaste extrusion as a technique since the cure time would be a bottleneck. (Let's rule out energy intense curing agents.)

A bricklaying robot... supplied with bricks via the scaffold in the structure.... could the engineering to do that possibly be cost effective against skilled humans? Or the big crane? We haven't even considered aesthetics.

Cursed. Problem.