The House of The Future?

I happened to see a segment recently on 60 Minutes about a new method of building homes. This process is known as 3D printing. It is a technique that has been developed for use in making all sorts of things such as parts for machines, cars, and more. 3D printing uses a computer-guided nozzle to precisely lay down material layers on top of each other to eventually form complex parts.

Now this process has been super-sized to build homes out of a special concrete mixture. For example, a company out of Austin, Texas is developing an entire community of homes using this innovative 3D printing method.

To provide some context of where the home building industry was 100 years ago when Frank Gambino built his first new home, take a look at the photo of two men and a horse digging out a basement. The horse would pull a bucket that would scrape out a layer of dirt and then dump it off to the side. This process would be repeated over and over again until the hole was deep enough. (Kind of like 3D printing in reverse!) Unfortunately, the horse-drawn bucket could only make a bowl-shaped hole, and men would then hand dig the corners to make the basement. It was back-breaking labor!

There have been many improvements to home building in the last 100 years, but the basic design has remained relatively unchanged. Will a 3D-printed house be the future? Only time and American ingenuity will tell.

Gambino Realtors is proud to have been a part of growing the Rockford area for 100 years, and we look forward to continuing that tradition for the next 100.

Jonathan R. Krause, President, Gambino Realtors

815.282.2222 | www.GoGambino.com