This Charity Is 3D-Printing Homes In Poor Countries For Just Rs 2.6 Lakh And Under 24 Hours

For a few years now, a charitable organisation named New Story has been building houses in El Salvador, replacing old scrap metal and tarpaulin structures with proper, sturdy homes.

It¡¯s grueling work for the San Francisco based charity, and one that took an agonizingly long time to build just 150 homes.

Images courtesy: New Story

So they soon began to consider just how they could they do their jobs faster, while still keeping the cost down and providing quality work to the people in need. The answer, as it turned out, was there all along.

No, we¡¯re not talking about the power of love. We¡¯re talking about 3D printing, that technology niche so far confined to crafters, and certain sections of the aerospace and automotive manufacturing industries. In the three years of its existence, New Story had gathered funds to construct 1,300 homes across the world and had completed just 850 of them. Then, about a year ago, they decided to kick it up a notch.

For 10 months now, the charity has been messing around with construction technology company ICON. The idea was to design a giant 3D printer that, instead of churning out cosplay armour or replacement car parts, could instead print out entire homes for the poor. Today, the two companies were finally able to show off their finished product; a 350-square-foot home built in Austin, Texas, and the first 3D-printed house in the country that keeps to US housing codes.

It¡¯s a prototype for homes to be ¡°printed¡± by New Story in places like El Salvador, Bolivia, Haiti, and Mexico, where a significant percentage of the population are exceedingly poor. Right now, it takes the charity eight months to build a community of 100 homes, each costing about $6,000 (approximately Rs 3,89,700).

With the 3D printer, New Story Can build a house in anywhere between 12 to 24 hours, and each costs only $4,000 (about Rs 2,59,800).

It¡¯s not printed using plastic or metal compounds either, these houses are your standard concrete-based structures. The difference is that a giant printer lays out the structure by horizontal slices in the same way you¡¯d squeeze out toothpaste onto your brush, and you don¡¯t waste a single bit of building material either.

We've spent the last year dreaming about how to provide more homes for families at a lower cost and faster than ever. The result? A jaw-dropping 3D printer that will print homes for the world's poorest enabled by @ICON3DTech! pic.twitter.com/BZthJV9icM

¡ª New Story (@NewStoryCharity) 12 March 2018

Where simple geometric shapes like squares and rectangles would be cheapest for a charity to build for homeless people, a 3D printer can create curves, arches, and more for the same price. ¡°You could print a house in the shape of a Fibonacci spiral if you wanted to,¡± ICON co-founder Jason Ballard tells WIRED. ¡°It¡¯s just as simple as printing a square.¡±

With a customised mortar mix and an insistence on locally sourced materials, New Story is ready to bring new homes to thousands of people across the world. And if they ever need to change the design of the residences they¡¯re outputting, they can just zip into the proprietary software to create a new home to print.