The world doesn’t want boxes. That’s not what’s in the human heart.

February 13, 2023 8:41 AM

Ingels played around with designing a house that could be entirely printed, including the roof. “You get forms that look incredibly fresh,” he told me. “These mixes of squares and domes, these ‘squomes.’ ” Can 3-D Printing Help Solve the Housing Crisis? [New Yorker] (archive link) Or at least make housing less uniform? A look inside ICON House Zero.

How are 3D homes printed? They're extruded out of concrete. But What's it really like to live in a 3D printed home?

posted by Mchelly (36 comments total)

I definitely love the architecture that 3D printing makes possible (or at least, makes more practical) but the housing crisis is an economic and zoning issue, not an architectural or construction-speed issue.

North America, at least, does not have a housing crisis. We have a landlord crisis, exacerbated by the regulatory capture of zoning laws. Some of those buildings are amazing, that's true, but a single-story dwelling on a large lot in desert isn't solving society's problems.
posted by mhoye at 8:51 AM on February 13, 2023 [69 favorites]

When I was finishing up my architecture degree our group project ended up doing a deep dive into straw bale construction - which goes the opposite way of substituting low-skill labor for high tech equipment, but does have the redeeming feature of working well in any climate where insulation is required (which these 3D printing options don't). It seemed low cost, democratic, and was a trending concept, which has also utterly failed to take off at all.

As mhoye says, this is a technical problem to a social and legal issue. Additionally, it largely ignores the major issues of our cities and communities. We don't need more one story housing solutions, we need more four story housing solutions and a legal framework that allows it.
posted by meinvt at 9:13 AM on February 13, 2023 [20 favorites]

I don't have the best grasp on all the various issues, though one solution that I've seen over and over is that single family housing zoning should be made illegal nationwide (that is, you CAN build single family housing on a lot but you don't need a NIMBY prone public hearing for a permitted exemption if you want to build a bunch of apartments). Those cute midwest towns with street level retail and two or three floors of apartments aren't something you can Just Build now and require, as above, a lot of NIMBY prone bullshit.

I've seen mentioned pre-permitted designs (not sure if that's the right phrase, the cookie cutter apartments prevalent from the early parts of the 1900s with interesting but ultimately cosmetic street facing differences) as well to simplify the process.

At the end of the day though, like, sorry existing home owners? You've enjoyed the fruits of systems you were probably not aware of and the have-nots who couldn't partake were out of sight and out of mind. There cannot be pity or carve outs, it just has to get done.
posted by Slackermagee at 9:16 AM on February 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

In the meantime, he’d applied to be in NASA’s next astronaut crew. He’d been rejected on this round, but he planned to try again. You never know what might happen next.

If my builder was trying to literally go to the moon after printing my house with an experimental concrete slurry, I would consider that a huge red flag.
posted by credulous at 9:20 AM on February 13, 2023 [28 favorites]

NYT translation: can we use 3d printing to get rid of more workers and make the built environment more aesthetically interesting?

We spend a lot of time and money as a society ensuring that housing stay unaffordable and that vacant homes can exist side by side with homeless folks. Its a policy, not a bug.

Also, in the long 20th century human population went up 4x and size of earth did not change. But its not a physical lack of land thst constrains us, its class war via "protect homeowners property values and the character of the neighborhood."
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 9:22 AM on February 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

God, we'll just grasp at any fuckin' technological dreamland hype to avoid hunkering down and building the incredibly basic midrise apartments with retail on ground next to a reasonable-width street with frequent bus service that any city of 50,000 people in Europe could do in their sleep, won't we?
posted by Superilla at 9:27 AM on February 13, 2023 [33 favorites]

Protecting property values isn't the driver. It's regulatory/political capture by developers who make enormous profits when the cost of new housing is high, and prefer to build single family dwellings because they're extremely cheap to make (cheap materials and cheap labour vs dense/high rise costs) and they can offload most of the true cost of infrastructure to the municipality/region. NIMBYism and "property values" are the dog whistles they use to get the conservative voters to fall in line with the agenda. The big money is in building a thousand shitty houses out in the burbs and selling them for mid six figures when they cost a quarter of that to contruct.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:31 AM on February 13, 2023 [13 favorites]

e.g. this is why Doug Ford is premier, because he'll do anything to allow developers to put shit houses up in the exurbs.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:33 AM on February 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

I had a really strong adverse reaction to that video. I feels it totally bypasses everything that is costly/problematic about building houses. You'll skip a few days of framing just to get uninsulated concrete toothpaste looking walls?

I mean it's a cool idea, but you'll still need to put flooring, plumbing, electricity, a legit roof, windows, interior finish....
posted by WaterAndPixels at 9:38 AM on February 13, 2023 [10 favorites]

NIMBYism and "property values" are the dog whistles they use to get the conservative voters to fall in line with the agenda. The big money is in building a thousand shitty houses out in the burbs and selling them for mid six figures when they cost a quarter of that to contruct.

No, that's not true. Home builder stocks aren't particularly valuable, building any buildings anywhere is not a high-margin business, and the billions made doing new construction is dwarfed by the trillions the existing housing market is worth via rising property values.

You'll skip a few days of framing just to get uninsulated concrete toothpaste looking walls? Framing walls is possibly the easiest part of new construction houses (maybe landscaping is easier?) Also I find these dreadful looking, at least most of them.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:08 AM on February 13, 2023

Home builder stocks aren't particularly valuable,

Maybe not, but developers sure have captured local (and some state) legislatures
posted by lalochezia at 10:20 AM on February 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

The world doesn’t want boxes. That’s not what’s in the human heart.

If you're experiencing extruded concrete in your human heart, consult a physician.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:46 AM on February 13, 2023 [10 favorites]

After many years of trying to buy a house and being outcompeted by "investors", we finally managed to purchase a brick ranch house that is indeed a box. It is exactly what my heart wanted: a home whose monthly mortgage payment will not suddenly increase astronomically and that we can't be evicted from just because the owner got bored with us living there.
posted by hydropsyche at 10:49 AM on February 13, 2023 [12 favorites]

Puts me in mind of a retrospective on Buckminster Fuller in the NYRB (unfortunately paywalled) that viewed him as a classic hype man and early techbro. Those geodesic homes he touted are still getting press decades later, but weren't especially strong, durable, pleasant to live in . . . and tended to leak.

Some version this new tech may work out, or it may not. But it's not super interesting as a solution to the housing crisis, at least where I am (SF Bay Area): It doesn't matter what technique you don't use when not building houses.

It's regulatory/political capture by developers

Not in my area. Existing homeowners have a lot of power, and new construction doesn't help them. Developers might want luxury houses, but they definitely want speedy permitting and opening of new land. Neither happen. Even vacant lots can take ages to get a plan approved on.

And they definitely don't want to propose a "big" multi-dwelling project and spend years and years of negotiation--it's not just delaying profits but they're incurring cost of capital. n general, US construction is much slower and much more expensive than our peer countries because of the number of hurdles to jump.

I went through this small scale trying to help my mom build an ADU in Santa Cruz, a supposedly very liberal city that's made a big deal of being ADU friendly due to the housing shortage. Permits added probably nine months onto the process beyond what we'd expected, we had to consult a lawyer, we changed ownership of the main house, and due to outdated "green" regulation we had to install gas powered appliances. There are so many examples of this all around.
posted by mark k at 11:10 AM on February 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

The novelty of a heart-shaped room would probably wear off in less than a day.

That "House Zero" actually seems very claustrophobic, cluttered, and inefficient. "Just have a large plot of land, and you can build a house with a lot of small rooms with inexplicably round corners". And I'm surprised that the interior walls are also concrete - so you're not able to ever change the layout of the house.
posted by meowzilla at 11:14 AM on February 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Maybe not, but developers sure have captured local (and some state) legislatures

Like what Mark K said, I agree that some local legislatures are captured by people who own mass amounts of real estate, but they are not making their money developing - they are making it via holding.. They might make some excess money via regulatory capture of the zoning process keeping upstarts out - but due to the cost and complexity of developing property (much, but not all necessary, because doing things wrong can easily kill people) but I'm just not convinced there are that many upstarts.

There might be some small exurbs where they do make money developing but no major cities.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:19 AM on February 13, 2023

The world doesn’t want boxes. That’s not what’s in the human heart.

Like this is where I was meant to be. Like I'd found the key to true happiness.
posted by pwnguin at 11:40 AM on February 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's complicated. We need to use less concrete, but technically, you can pour any material into the printer. Maybe if you worked on it, you could print a seaweed or a straw house. Or a house made of the scraps from thinning forests.

I agree with everyone above who says single family homes are not the answer to any relevant questions. but historically, single family houses have been where architects and engineers experimented and figured out new technologies. The icons of 20th century, where architects experimented with new technologies were rarely nice to live in.

Personally, I don't think 3-D printing has a significant future, but I may be wrong.

For all of my life, and many years before I was born, people have been asking why construction is so inefficient. Why can't a house be like a car, people ask. And architects are forever fascinated by container homes and industrial construction systems. The whole answer to this is so long and complex, it would take a book to answer it. But the short answer is context. There's a reason this is happening in exurbs in a desert state. Printing a house in central Paris would be a lot more complicated, and suddenly, the price wouldn't be as competitive.
posted by mumimor at 12:04 PM on February 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Maybe if you worked on it, you could print a seaweed or a straw house.

Sure you could. But how'd that go for the other two little pigs? Not so good, right? Okay then.
posted by The Bellman at 12:28 PM on February 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

Well there's your answer, just 3D print bricks...oh.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:52 PM on February 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Printing a house in central Paris would be a lot more complicated, and suddenly, the price wouldn't be as competitive.

Perhaps 3D printing would allow infill and repair faster in dense places? Personally I really like Rastra for that, because I love the sound-fire-and-thermal insulation, but which also needs a concrete pump taller than the final structure.
posted by clew at 1:27 PM on February 13, 2023

Just have a large plot of land, and you can build a house with a lot of small rooms with inexplicably round corners". And I'm surprised that the interior walls are also concrete - so you're not able to ever change the layout of the house.

Oh, wow, that sounds a lot like Simmons Hall: a dorm which managed to simultaneously be unattractively boxy on the outside, and studded inside with lung-shaped lounge spaces which basically guaranteed that most rooms had at least one pair of surfaces which didn't meet at right angles. And, yes, all the walls were concrete.

I will get behind oddly-angled rooms when they make furniture that matches them.
posted by jackbishop at 1:32 PM on February 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

If I lived in House Zero it would be a race between acceptance of the toothpaste aesthetic and my ability to plaster over every exposed concrete surface. I do like the ability to effortlessly create curves, though. I think the missing piece is the ability to embed curved glass windows directly into those walls. The living room is a strange inversion of how bay windows typically expand a space.
posted by tuffet at 1:46 PM on February 13, 2023

I want a box.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 3:21 PM on February 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Is there a 3D printer for land? (And more specifically, land near services, jobs, schools, grocery stores, transit, etc?)
posted by splitpeasoup at 4:15 PM on February 13, 2023

Is there a 3D printer for land? (And more specifically, land near services, jobs, schools, grocery stores, transit, etc?)

There is!
posted by pwnguin at 4:52 PM on February 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Pffft. Hawaii has been 3D printing new land for years.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:24 PM on February 13, 2023 [8 favorites]

Maybe it's worth asking what is the question that 3-d house-printing is supposed to answer?

The questions I think we should be asking are: how do we build more sustainable structures with a smaller CO2 output and better energy efficiency? How do we build better cities, that are walkable and bikeable?

Also: a sustainable building is a building that "lives" for a long time, and often that means it must be flexible. Buildings that are made very specifically to norms and prescriptions of one age will often not fit in another.

There is a 3-D printed model house near where I used to walk my dog. It is ridiculously ugly, I don't think it's going to convince anyone that it is a good idea. But a big part of the uglyness comes from the lack of solutions for where the concrete meets the windows, doors and roof. Maybe if someone could work that out, there would be a future for printing houses.
posted by mumimor at 10:18 PM on February 13, 2023

The class asperations and insecurities of existing homeowners and chambers of commerce are the 800lb gorrilla of local govt, local zoning. That developers can be rich and bribe/extort their way to making compromises does not alter the fact. Developers don't care about what color you paint your mailbox. Homeowners will attempt arson to reverse your use of pastels.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 12:19 AM on February 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

3d printing, like shipping container homes and factory assembly modulars, are solutions in want of a problem.

We know how to build DSFH, Duplexes, rowhomes, apartments etc. We just choose to keeo the turniquette tight.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 12:22 AM on February 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

When I was finishing up my architecture degree our group project ended up doing a deep dive into straw bale construction - which goes the opposite way of substituting low-skill labor for high tech equipment, but does have the redeeming feature of working well in any climate where insulation is required (which these 3D printing options don't). It seemed low cost, democratic, and was a trending concept, which has also utterly failed to take off at all

What are the problems with straw bale construction?

Is it fire danger; earthquake danger; higher ongoing maintenance needs; prone to mold, or something else?

Or is it a perfectly good building material doomed by NIMBY snobbery?
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:40 AM on February 14, 2023

Well, not many farmers make the old-school square bales today.

That said, I think there is going to be a surge in renewable plant-based construction materials -- and not just timber, but also straw, bamboo, sea grass, nettles and hemp. And maybe more that I forgot. I know there is a growing amount of research going on, and investors are beginning to look. Hempcrete has existed for a while.

As it is now, straw isn't suitable for taller buildings, so it isn't compatible with the ambition of denser cities (that don't need to be high-rise, just dense enough that you can support a sustainable infrastructure of public transportation and walkable streets). But that might change.

The good thing (for the planet that is), is that we are running out of the sand and gravel that is suitable for concrete. So we have to invent something else. And just using whole, construction grade timber everywhere we use concrete today is not sustainable either. So finding ways to use truly renewable fiber is important. And fun.

It's interesting, the way architectural history is taught at architecture schools, the modernists are presented as heroes, and I think many young architects want to be like them, and design visionary futuristic structures that seem absurd, but will one day be the norm. Bjarke Ingels would probably love to be seen as the le Corbusier of our time. But often futurism becomes a style, rather than the equivalent of the vision of those old guys. Who knows, if there really is a le Corbusier of our day, she might be living in China, building with mud.
posted by mumimor at 1:42 AM on February 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

What are the problems with straw bale construction?

1. It is labour intensive. Acceptable if the construction crew is you and your family (whether that is nuclear, traditonal or Fast&Furious stule). But expensive for a business.
2. The walls are very thick which gives the great insulation properties but also takes up a lot of square footage which is a problem for small lots.
3. Standard finish is stucco, anything else is a 100% aesthetic cost.
4. Wide roof overhangs are required unless your climate is bone dry year round. Really best practice is a wrap around porch. This limits architectural choices and again increases square footage.
5. It is wicked sensitive to detailing to keep out water. What would be a minor mistake requiring a simple repair and retrofit on a stick framed building can destroy large sections of hard to replace wall on a strawbale building.
6. The base of the wall is wide which means the foundation is wide. This usually results in slab on grade foundations (no basement). There are other options but they are all some combination of unconventional, expensive, and complicated.
7. Essentially restricted to single story. There are a few two story SB houses around but they are really pushing the limits.
8. Straw isn't available everywhere in the required quantities and is fairly expensive to ship. Overcomable but at increased cost.

All of which means buildings should be rectangular with gable roofs of preferably standing seam metal and wide wrap around porches. Perfect for a rural location if you are building it yourself but not so great for a narrow city lot.

The main advantage if you don't live in the middle of a wheat field is the high insulation value and sustainability. Both of which can be gotten with double stud walls and wool/denim/cellulose insulation which can be taught to conventional framing crews in a few hours and don't come with the other constraints.

I seriously considered strawbale for my shop but in the end went with double studs on a combined plate wall. Equivalent performance with less hassle.
posted by Mitheral at 6:38 AM on February 14, 2023 [6 favorites]

The good thing (for the planet that is), is that we are running out of the sand and gravel that is suitable for concrete. So we have to invent something else.

This is a bit of a bugaboo. Supplies of naturally occuring sharp sand and gravel where you can just back up a truck and load it up are limited. But take rock and run it thru a crusher and nice sharp sand and gravel comes out the other end. In most cases crushed aggregate actually results in stronger concrete. More expensive but we aren't going to run out of rock. Also concrete itself can be crushed and used as aggregate.

But because it is more expensive illegal sand mining will feed a black market which is a real problem if only because of the environmental degradation. And the costs of transporting crush from plants to construction sites is a problem both monetarily and environmentally.
posted by Mitheral at 7:10 AM on February 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

The world doesn’t want boxes. That’s not what’s in the human heart.

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same

There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same
posted by kirkaracha at 8:27 AM on February 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

I read the article and dude seems a little too high on his own supply and the other dudes fawning over his cowboy hat were cringe. However I do like the look of the extruded concrete- like living in a house made of frosting. And I bet it sounds nice and soft in those rooms. A giant pain to hang things up though.
posted by oneirodynia at 1:35 PM on February 14, 2023 [1 favorite]