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    Ireland gets world’s first 3D printed social housing
    Futurology

    Ireland gets world’s first 3D printed social housing

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    1. lughnasadh on

      Submission Statement

      Ireland has one of the western world’s most severe housing crisis. Average house prices in summer 2024 are at €360,000 ($375,000) and rising at 10% per year. That’s more expensive than the average American house price, and double the EU average. If ever there was a country that needs 3D printing of houses to work, it’s Ireland.

      This development is notable for a few features. It took 132 days from first onsite work to handing the keys over, considerably faster than traditional methods. It’s social housing, so not sold at open-market rates. Finally, it’s all done to EU building regulations with regard to quality.

      Still, it’s only 3 houses. Ireland needs 60,000 houses a year to keep up with its population increase, and is currently only building about half that. The existing deficit of people wanting homes is in the 100,000’s. 3D printing better take off fast if its to make any dent in that.

    3. GreatKen on

      I’ve said this before, The same technologies that wlll throw people out of work can be used to lower the cost of living.

    4. TheCassiniProjekt on

      The housing disaster is by design yet a proportion of the Irish public keep voting in the same cause for the problem, Fine Gael and Fine Fail, because they’d rather see the values on their homes increase while everything else in the country decays. It’s myopic, cruel and stupid in the extreme.

    5. Imagine_Beyond on

      I wonder how well a 10 cm thick wall of concrete can insulate. It would be very cool if we 3D printed passive houses

    6. -HealingNoises- on

      This could potentially solve a lot, exciting stuff!!!
      But what is to stop companies from printing their own houses? Without regulation of the core issue this just makes it cheaper for them to construct what they wish on any land possible, including land no one wants to live on, but still great as stores of value if china’s ghost cities are anything to go by.

      So the government would have to mark an awful lot of land as off limits for investment purchase or at least on the condition that it will be used to house actual humans but then you get back to asking why they can’t enforce that with housing in the first place.