Given how out of control housing prices have gotten, the idea of just printing out an affordable house is appealing — and Havelar in Portugal is making it a reality, New Atlas reported.
Havelar recently completed an unnamed, 860-square-foot, two-bedroom house in the Greater Porto area, one of the latest additions to the 3D-printed home trend. The walls are made from a concrete-like substance built up in thin layers, leaving a signature pattern of horizontal ridges on each wall.
The printing portion of the construction took just 18 hours. With human construction workers coming in afterward to add doors, windows, roofing, and other finishing touches, the whole project took less than two months, New Atlas revealed.
That short timetable is one of the major reasons for the home's price tag. Whereas the average cost of construction in Porto is roughly $3,330 per square meter (about 1.2 square yards), Havelar's new building worked out to about $1,600 per square meter — less than half the price.
"We want to team up with partners who see themselves in building sustainable and accessible communities," Rodrigo Vilas-Boas, co-founder of Havelar, told New Atlas. "With [$161,000], it's possible for a young couple to have the home they've always dreamed of, in an area with good access and services."
To achieve this affordable and comfortable result, Havelar used COBOD's BOD2 printer, the same technology that printed this earthquake-resistant house in Guatemala.
This is just the beginning for Havelar, which has also revealed plans to become even more eco-friendly. It will incorporate natural building materials like earth and straw, New Atlas reported. Building a home from the earth dug up on the same site isn't a new idea, but it's a uniquely eco-friendly and cost-effective approach — and straw is a shockingly good insulation for an energy-efficient home.
Havelar's eventual goal is to become carbon neutral by 2030, meaning it takes as much carbon pollution from the environment as it puts into it.
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