According to “How an 11-Foot-Tall 3-D Printer Is Helping to Create a Community” (Kamin, 2021), a partnership is working together to create “the world’s first community of 3-D printed homes” for the low-paid residents in Nacajuca, Mexico. Recently, the use of 3-D printing for building objects has grown rapidly in different fields, one of which is for construction. With the speed and requirement of less than three workers, the completion of a home can be finished within 24 hours. New Story, the nonprofit organization who is involved in providing homes for people in poverty, saw the advantages of 3-D printed houses. Therefore, in 2019, they started a project in Nacajuca, Mexico with Échale, an affordable housing social enterprise based in Mexico, and Icon, a construction technology company who had experience in a wide range of projects from charity to commercial. About 10 houses and more were printed by Icon’s Vulcan II printer, an 11-foot-tall three-dimensional printer. By placing layers of lavacrete, a special concrete mix, which “looks much like a massive soft-serve ice cream cone” but forming a house. Then Échale played an important role in on-site building and selecting members for the village based on the needs. One of the chosen families is the Hernández family. Mr.Hernández is a carpenter with little income. Moving from the last tiny and messy place to a new home will provide him more working space and the feeling of a safe place for his daughter. Henry D’Esposito, JLL lead of construction research, agrees that this is an appropriate way to use 3-D printing for single-family homes in Nacajuca because of their size, repetitiveness and tolerance of a magnitude 7.4 earthquake. On the other hand, he suggested that right now it might not be fit for all markets, especially the commercial real estate market. The study had to be made more about the building life expectancy and how it will perform over time.
Reference
Kamin, D. (2021, September 28). How an 11-Foot-Tall 3-D Printer Is Helping to Create a Community. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/business/3D-printing-homes.html
Throwback to two weeks ago, it was almost the deadline of homework from the first day of the class, “What are two articles in The New York Times that interest you?”. I knew that I had to hurriedly pick the article since it was very late at night and I still had not looked closely at any articles in The New York Times, so I did not have much reason for my chosen article. This article has brought my attention from the title that sounds relevant to me and it made me guess that it might not be too hard for me to understand and continue using this article for the further assignment because it is related to my field.
ReplyDeleteAnother reason is that this article also included the real pictures of the 3-D printed one story houses. As I quickly scrolled through the page, they were all beautiful, clean and cosy. Looking at the images closely, the details of the houses were pretty much unlike the usual houses that I knew. I noticed that these houses consisted of numerous layers on the wall and did not smooth, because the 3-d printer had to print layer by layer. The corner of the houses were in curved shape, as I searched for more information it was designed to enhance internal airflow.
Reading this article has changed my view on the use of the 3-d printing technology. When I was studying in college, using 3-D printing or laser cutting were very expensive. Only a few people used only laser cutting, 2-D cutting paper in a plane, to make models. No one used 3-D printing at that time. So I used to believe that for 3-D printing techniques to make real houses, the investors must be interested in building a unique or fancy building, for commercial purposes or projects that can make money, not the charity project. But this article gave different perspectives and presented the reasons why it was appropriate to use for the community.
The article you selected was very interesting. It reminded me of the project that was about building safe housing for scientist on mars by using 3-D printing. I think it was in the Nasa’s 3D-printed Habitat Challenge a few years ago. The winner used these giant robotic arms to do the building or 3D print the prototype of the building. Anyway, I think 3-D printing houses is a great way to provide housing for people in poverty, since it only takes few resources, plus it also looks very comfortable to stay in.
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