The world's largest 3D-printed neighborhood was just built in Texas

[lizard-of-oz]

@KowboyBob

Watch the 60 Minutes segment - there’s rebar reinforcement every 10 layers.

Horizontally? Is that helping for earthquakes?

@Shuck

But apparently it doesn’t mean cheaper (for the buyer of the house, anyways…)

It also doesn’t mean faster. Or more sustainable, since concrete is responsible for 8% of total CO2 emissions worldwide.

So what is the actual benefit?

@Bonivus_elderheart

There are a couple single floor ‘townhouse’ style apartments down the street from my house. I could absolutely see this method of construction used to make up single floor duplexes or multi-family dwellings (i.e. condos or townhomes, or just a small set of apartments)

You could also use modern prefab wood walls for that, a town house can be erected in 2-3 days. That is dramatically more sustainable, not only in production, but also when it comes to heating and cooling, and also much nicer to live in. Source: I live in one.

For many applications, concrete is neither required, and the alternatives have advantages.

[RickMycroft]

That horrible euclidean geometry that tugs at the sanity of the viewer!

[L0ki]

At least the walls are reassuringly rugose.

[stinkinbadgers]

@Bonivus_elderheart

you still have to contend with essentially a concrete block wall for purposes of dealing with the interior. That’s usually fixed with furring strips and drywall; If you are going for the whole smoothed | textured stone wall’ look, well then there’s plaster going over the raw wall surface.
Adding or moving outlets? you’ll need tools (and PPE!) for cutting concrete in order to get inside the walls and affixing outlet boxes. Have a plumbing leak from a burst joint / frozen pipes / etc?

This is what lept out at me. I have long wondered why houses have never made it easier to deal with that stuff (I think walls should consist of easily removeable panels, I’m tired of people saying oh it’s just so easy to punch hole, spackle and repaint… ugh no it’s not it’s a pain in the keister). This is totally a step in the wrong direction for being able to deal with electrical and plumbing stuff.

[GilbertWham]

Yeah, I’ve lived in a few places like that too.