Can 3D-printed homes solve the housing crisis—or are they overhyped? Discover why groundbreaking projects failed, the engineering challenges, regulatory road...
The industry as a whole still has some kinks to work out.
They can do pre-fabricated architecture, but they haven’t cracked it.
Current prefabricated construction (especially in the context of homes / housing) is still limited in terms of customization and/or requires a huge amount of manual architecture / engineering work, and the consumer facing customization software is still pretty garbage.
People still often use contractors because they want the level of customization they bring, even when off the shelf options are available.
Don’t get me wrong I have massive faith in prefab construction in terms of infrastructure projects like bridges and elevated guideways etc where you have a design team doing them all up front and sending them off to be made at a factory and assembled on site, but I haven’t seen anything in terms of home construction that seems revolutionary from prefab yet.
They can do pre-fabricated architecture, but they haven’t cracked it.
Current prefabricated construction (especially in the context of homes / housing) is still limited in terms of customization and/or requires a huge amount of manual architecture / engineering work, and the consumer facing customization software is still pretty garbage.
People still often use contractors because they want the level of customization they bring, even when off the shelf options are available.
Don’t get me wrong I have massive faith in prefab construction in terms of infrastructure projects like bridges and elevated guideways etc where you have a design team doing them all up front and sending them off to be made at a factory and assembled on site, but I haven’t seen anything in terms of home construction that seems revolutionary from prefab yet.
Most new mid price subdivisions are pre fabs assembled on site.
Before people get excited by 3D printing YouTube videos, they should really learn what the current state of house manufacturing is.
The big costs are not the structure, it’s the land and infrastructure, utilities, sewers, roads, etc.