Dutch Couple Enter World’s 1st 3D Home- Built In Just Five Days

NEW YORK (VINnews) — A Dutch couple are now the proud tenants of the first-ever 3D-printed concrete house in Holland. The single- storey house, which boasts more than 1000 feet of floor space, is located in the town of Eindhoven in the southern Netherlands, according to a CNN report.

The couple, Elize Lutz (71) and Harrie Dekkers (67) answered an ad seeking tenants for the unusual house. They will be allowed to stay for just 6 months, but were unfazed, claiming that they “are always looking for special places to live.” Dekkers said that the house is like a “bunker” and makes her feel safe.

The house is shaped like a boulder in order to blend in with the landscape and even has reclining walls. It is the first in a series of five projects initiated by Project Milestone, a joint construction and innovation project in which a number of factors collaborated: Eindhoven’s University of Technology, the local municipality, real estate investors and specialist construction companies. The first house is a single storey, while the others will be multiple storey homes.

The house, which has two bedrooms and a spacious living room, consists of 24 concrete elements, which were printed layer-by-layer at a plant in Eindhoven. The elements were then transported by truck to the building site and placed on a foundation.

The printer is a robot with a mechanical arm that can move on a track in seven different directions to lay mortar in a pattern on a printbed — as designed on a computer. The dry mortar in a silo is mixed with water in a mixer and pumped via a hose to a nozzle mounted on the end of the robot arm.

The entire project took around a year to complete, though the physical printing took just 120 hours. The rest, say the project backers, was down to “trial and error” and perfecting the construction process. The house is due to be rented out for short periods to private tenants.

Lutz and Dekker are now looking forward to moving from their Amsterdam home to the new location an hour and a half’s drive southwards.

“It’s completely different,” said Lutz. “In Amsterdam we look out at water and there we are in between lots of beautiful trees.”

A number of countries are now working on 3D printing projects, which involve quick build times and low construction costs. A small house was printed in 24 hours in Russia in 2017 and Mexico has printed an entire neighborhood designated for families which live on $3 a day.

In the US, the first printed home to hit the market — a single-story,1,400-square-foot space in Riverhead, New York — was listed for $299,000 this February. Additionally a series of residences in Austin, Texas, including some four-room buildings, will be offered to the public later this year.

Yasin Torunoglu, alderman for housing and spatial development in the Eindhoven municipality, said in a statement: “Innovation is an important pillar in construction. In addition to affordable homes, the market increasingly demands innovative housing concepts. With the 3D-printed home, we’re now setting the tone for the future: the rapid realization of affordable homes with control over the shape of your own house.”