Yet another example of the over-hype of “3D Printing”. Yes it’s neat that they collected some local dirt, mixed it with some non-locally sourced water and binder, and poured it into an extruder run on some kind of non locally sourced energy, then sprayed it with some protective coating - it baffles me that people see this as a possible mainstream building technique. Running electrical, plumbing, air conditioning etc through this structure is doable but much harder, as the expectations of these niceties have evolved with modern construction and need easy access and hiding with things like dry wall.
This almost reads as an onion article with the headline “brilliant scientists figure out how to overcomplicate the construction of mud huts similar to our earliest human ancestors”.
> Continuing to develop this tech could make it useful for setting up buildings in hostile environments.
To add to this: If you've ever been to these embedments after the fact, they can leave behind a lot of waste/trash. Namely, concrete (pads, walls, etc). Much of which cannot be easily re-used and breaking it down is expensive/hard.
You use 80% locally sourced materials, if the base just gets left, and starts to breaks down, all you wind up with is mostly original dirt from the area instead of toxic concrete dust.
PS - Although Hesco barrier[0] has also made very positive inroads here, replacing concrete with mostly local dirt, chicken wire, and fabric. But it cannot be used for dwellings, only perimeter wall.
Agree for Mars - this tech will translate well into other areas of need in hostile environments - like agriculture, mining, large scale manufacturing etc.
You run utilities the same way as with masonry, either conduit outside the wall later, or flex conduit placed into the wall as you build it. I've done the latter in earth ship construction (meter thick walls built with dirt basically) and it was as simple as it gets.
As far as practicality, I'd be more interested in the long term stability of the material. But you likely can do the same thing we did with my friends earth ship style domes, which was to coat them in fabric and then spray a few mm thick layer of cement all over it.
Here's the result. As you can see this is something that would appeal to quite a few people. Pre COVID he had no problem booking airbnb guests for this every night for months out.
I wouldn't be so quick to be dismissive of this general concept. Particularly in Mediterranean areas where wood framing materials are more expensive, this may a perfectly reasonable approach.
While that’s true, and this is no instanthouse.exe, these are all proof of concept projects. Things like longevity or other challenges might not even be the focus. So while this is no holy grail, it’s a stepping stone towards certain building solutions or local solutions (think quick emergency shelters, or off world for instance, to name a few)
I think it’s a great idea to build mud huts on another planet where labor is scarce, machine energy is under different constraints, and certain resources are “unlimited”.
But this approach for building a house on Earth to house humans seems way off the bell curve of potential to scale.
Yes true, but brick and other base material like it is very strong and support fixtures to attach ducting, pipes, cables - I’m not sure you can drill brackets into this mud and safely secure an AC duct or conduit.
Your plumbing and wires are actually embedded into the brick walls? Not just a hole through the brick, but they are actually completely within the brick walls themselves?
Yea but good luck running interior 2x4 furring walls for MEPs (Mechanical, electrical, plumbing) on curved wall structures like this. Would be an absolute carpentry nightmare.
It would also be a nightmare on a curved brick wall, or curved cement structure. The point of the shown technology was the experiment and the potential of it, not the specifics of this single architectural design.
curved wood features and structures are not uncommon, using materials like bamboo and engineered wood. it’s not easy and requires specialized skills, but it’s not a nightmare. and flexible wood structures tend to be more resilient on a per-mass basis.
> Running electrical, plumbing, air conditioning etc through this structure is doable but much harder
Have you seen architecture in like, any warm part of the world, especially Italy? Masonry/concrete techniques dominate.
If anything, this is far easier to integrate with utilities, since it can be incorporated into the 3D design.
It also seems easier to drill through than traditional masonry/concrete.
This technique is even more labor-saving than filling formwork with local materials, because formwork is very labor intensive, and you can't readily incorporate unusual utilities, windows, shapes, etc.
Exactly. God knows how many concepts I've seen for mixing local soils with magic powder and (typically) forming up walls. I do like that these guys could make rather free-form structures, but building an envelope is straightforward and runs into the issues of actually using the thing (seismic&water issues, installation of utilities, insulation, HVAC, longevity, insurance).
It's pretty hard to beat traditional methods and anything new typically has to be measurably quite a lot better.
If a person wanted to drive down costs, I'd probably tend more towards larger prefab components.
Maybe it's not so different from software in these areas.
I'd like to see how these compare with other earth-based construction methods (still used in many parts of the world, including developed countries [1]). My guess is that the voids improve the insulation, but reduce the compressive and shearing strength, but this may be mitigated by the round shape and the internal "triangular" structure.
In any case, it's an interesting experiment that should provide good data and observations toward a more "complete" house prototype.
You bring up a good point. I have yet to see anyone construct some of these structures on a shake table and report the resultant data. I wouldn't look for unreasonably good performance, but I wonder how it would perform against, for instance, modern rammed earth structures?
If any engineers out there have links to tests or studies please do post them.
And this technique really wouldn’t work well in impoverished places where people need shelter. It works well when there’s a lot of local technology but not a lot of labor, precisely the opposite working conditions in much of Africa.
This almost reads as an onion article with the headline “brilliant scientists figure out how to overcomplicate the construction of mud huts similar to our earliest human ancestors”.