Less than a few months ago I read an article in the Financial Times, “Ink outside the box”. The title is not exactly what you think, but it won’t take you long before you get the gist of the article. 3D technology is advancing at a rapid pace and it has been applied to everything, from creating objects to food and fruit. It is almost endless and one could possibly think that not long before manufacturing could take a twist back into small shops with specialized printers that can print just about anything you need, from shoes to fruit cakes.
While some part of this is still fantasy to some, several companies have already taken 3D printing to a bigger scale use and that’s printing houses. A Chinese company in May printed 10 houses in Shanghai in just under 24 hours. Sounds odd to think of a printed house and we are not talking about paper houses. Winsun Decoration Design, use huge a huge 3D printer of 32 meters long and 10 meters wide to print 10 homes, each of 200 m2. They used high grade cement that allows for speeding up construction time. Each house cost just under €4,500 euros.
This is an amazing breakthrough and one that can have a huge impact on property prices in the future. Quality is not affected but rather assured and with reduced delivery time, one can only envisage that the youngsters of tomorrow can almost design their houses on their tablets or virtual reality world and walk in the next day. Not quiet, but still a technology that certainly will revolutionize the property industry and prices.