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3D print your own house

Print a house? With a 3D printer? Wait, what?

3D printing has to be one of the most exciting and incredible inventions since sliced bread, but there are still things it has yet to achieve. Well, in three weeks time, we can at least tick off the item labelled “print a house”.

We kid you not, London-based studio Softkill Design will be building a 3D printed humble abode it calls Protohouse 1.0 over a period of three weeks – and it will be of a decent size. While those of you expecting a small castle with a moat will be sorely disappointed, 8×5 metres is easily enough to swing a cat in.

Construction will take place in a factory for size reasons – it’s not easy to print such a large object with a conventional home 3D printer – and the finished article will comprise eight pieces measuring roughly 2 to 2.25×1 metre in size. The material used will be a laser-sintered bioplastic which to us sounds like the stuff of science fiction.

What was originally an academic study has rapidly become a more serious building project that could hit production, although the design studio was cagey about releasing an exact price, stating only that it will become a “viable competitor” to more traditional building methods “in the near future”.

So there you have it, the dream of walking in and buying a flatpack house is actually not so absurd after all. We’re just curious how the plumbing and electrics would work.

[Softkill Design via Dezeen]

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Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home