HOUSING
October 2021 - January 2022 with Échale, a social housing production company in Mexico, and Icon, Échale, which has been operating in Mexico for 24 years, helped New Story select residents for the new homes based on need. It decided to sign the titles of each home not to a whole family but to the woman of the house. “It’s to protect the family,” said Francesco Piazzesi, Échale’s chief executive. “A man will sell a house if they need to. A woman will do whatever she needs to do to save the house for her children and her family.” Échale hires local workers to build their own communities, so plopping a 3-D printer from an American tech company into the heart of a rural village was a shift, the New York Times reported.
“If you came to Nacajuca when the 3-D printer was there, you would see machinery that looked like a RoboCop movie,” Piazzesi says. “It’s creating opportunities for the people because something gets into the community and it lasts.” “We know that being able to build more quickly, without sacrificing quality, is something that we have to make huge leaps on if we’re going to even make a dent on the issue of housing in our lifetime,” says Brett Hagler, New Story’s chief executive. Speed is only one factor in bringing a village to completion — New Story has teamed up with local officials in Tabasco to bring sewage services, electricity and water to the community.
The future and a warning The 3-D printing market grew 21 percent in the US last year last year, and Hubs, a manufacturing platform, projects that it will double in size over the next five years. A manufacturing process that builds objects layer by layer from a digital file, 3-D printing is set for explosive growth. After a pandemic-related boom from printing objects like test swabs, protective gear and respirator parts, the 3-D printing market is forecast to be worth $55.8 billion by 2027, according to Smithers, a technology consulting firm. Single-family homes are a good testing ground for the durability of 3-D printed construction because they are small and offer a repetitive design process without much height, says Henry D’Esposito, who leads construction research at JLL. “It really is a very effective and efficient way to build a small segment of properties, but it’s not something that applies across the broader commercial real estate ecosystem,” D’Esposito says. “We don’t know exactly how these buildings will perform over decades or what the long-term value retention will be for them. So if you’re talking to an investor or lender, that’s a big yellow flag.”
Layers of lavacrete, are poured one after another in long swirls. The printer is controlled by a tablet or smartphone, requires as few as three workers and can complete a home in less than 24 hours
66 propertyandbuild.com
