Whether it is a commercial residential building or a self-built house, it takes a long period to build a house, which may be three to six months, or years. But this house, it only takes a day to build.

Serendix Partners, a Japanese company, 3D printed a 20-ton reinforced concrete frame in just three hours. After 23 hours and 12 minutes of automated construction by machines, the SPHERE House, a solid spherical structure, was built.

In fact, there are examples of houses being built using 3D printers all over the world. In February 2021, the first 3D printed homes in the US were launched in New York, and in April 2021, the Netherlands also began offering rental homes built using 3D printers. In the Middle East and elsewhere, 3D-printed houses are also being built aggressively.

A 3D-printed house in the Netherlands, courtesy of Bart van Overbeeke Fotografie

Serendix Partners uses the 3D-printed SPHERE House, Designed by Masayuki Sono, a Japanese architect who won NASA's 3-D Habitat Challenge (3D Printed Habitat) in 2015, the Printed Habitat measures approximately 10 square meters. Although the construction time is short, but also "the five viscera".

SPHERE House, image from Serendix Partners

With the advantage of SPHERE in physical structure, SPHERE House can adapt to a variety of environments and avoid the impact of earthquakes, typhoons and other natural disasters. Its performance even reaches the insulation standards of Europe and the high anti-seismic standards of Japan. With advanced 3D printers and designs that can be completed by robots, construction will require as little manpower as possible.

Serendix Partners began its 3D-printed house project in 2019, and one of the reasons it chose this direction was because of the dwindling number of carpenters, especially in Japan. And that trend is making it more expensive to build a house the traditional way.

In terms of cost, the spherical structure of SPHERE House can reduce the surface area to a minimum, and the integrated design also means that the number of components can be reduced. Therefore, the cost of 3D printed House is not high. The current cost is about 3 million yen, which is similar to the price of a new car.

In the future, Serendix Partners expects greater automation to reduce construction time and cost. The company also plans to build a 30-pyong (about 99 square meters) house using 3D printing technology.

SPHERE House, which can be built in 24 hours, has eye-catching design, solid quality and can save cost and time. High enough cost performance, also means a wider range of uses. It can be used as a campsite, as a vacation home, or as a disaster shelter to provide immediate relief in the event of a large-scale natural disaster.

High prices, decades-long mortgage payments... Housing is actually a problem that troubles many people. Of course, there are other factors to consider in this huge and complex problem, but the 3D-printed SPHERE House means that for the price of a car, you may be able to buy a House.