An Instant House for $10K: Just Print It and Go

From start to finish, it took just 24 hours for a Russian firm to 3D-print a 400-square-foot home that can withstand Moscow winters.

This 400-square-foot home took just over a day to complete and equip. | Photo: Designboom

This 400-square-foot home took just over a day to complete and equip. | Photo: Designboom

From Moscow comes a novel solution to the affordable-housing problem:

A tiny home that took just 24 hours to build from start to finish and cost just slightly more than $10,000 to build.

Whoops, did we say “build”? We meant “print.”

Designboom has the skinny on the instant house, created by Russian 3D-printing construction company Apis Cor in the middle of a Moscow winter.

The house, a collaboration between Apis Cor and public developer PIK Companies Group, was entirely printed on site using Apis Cor’s mobile 3D printer.

The 400-square-foot home in the Moscow suburb of Stupino is circular in plan, with projections that give it the appearance of a rotor from overhead. The printer used to build it looks like a small tower crane and is totally portable; it can work from inside or outside the structure. Because the concrete “ink” needs to be at least 41 degrees Fahrenheit to flow, a tent was erected over the building site for the printing job to take place. (The printer itself can operate in temperatures as low as -31 degrees Fahrenheit.

Double walls with spray insulation keep the house warm, and the flat roof can bear a heavy load of snow. A thin layer of decorative plaster applied to the inside and outside provides additional insulation.

The house took 24 hours in all to print, plus several more hours of finishing work and appliance installation on the part of the construction crew, and the total project cost was approximately $10,134, or $275 per square meter. That’s just under $25 per square foot, which is super cheap.

“The Apis Cor company and its partners are confident that the house in Stupino was the first step that can convince the world that 3D technology in the construction market is a reality,” Designboom reports the company as crowing on its website.

Affordable-housing advocates hereabouts, please copy. This will save a ton of subsidy money.

Apis Cor realizes Russia’s first 3d-printed house in just 24 hours [Designboom]