October 2021 - January 2022
HOUSING
The cutting edge of 3D printing of homes
Printing our way out of the housing crisis 3D printing a range of housing from emergency to luxury residential and high-rise apartments meets New Zealand building standards and stringent European and US standards, says Property& Build publisher Mike Bishara
D
evelopment is held back here by our own inability to adapt, retrain and deal with the major changes that will be wrought in the construction sector. The situation is aided and abetted by a Resource Management Act that has not been fit for purpose for years. In the US, Europe and China off-site factory construction of walls, trusses and roofs has turned residential new building into largely producing a solid foundation and provision for the storm, waste and drinking water plus hooking up the 24 propertyandbuild.com
electricity. Here that privilege (with a lack of the need for double and triple consenting nightmares) is largely reserved to a few major players with a band of would-be competitors struggling in a maze of bureaucracy to compete. Legislation to create a more even playing field is wending its way tortuously through parliament We are well behind the mark in even getting off site consented manufacturing universally approved while offshore, off site construction has moved forward and is now being increasingly
augmented with onsite 3D printing. The disruption of the construction sector worldwide is happening all around us while we remain passive observers in the midst of our own housing crisis. Rush Digital chief executive Danu Abeysuriya says 3D printed homes could help to solve New Zealand's housing crisis but hundreds of jobs would be lost in the process. Abeysuriya says for example California needs two million new homes to overcome its housing crisis and has introduced progressive
rules around new technology and have developed a standard for 3D homes, which companies have taken into their designs. "There's a reason it's called disruptive technology. The reality is - if we do things the same way that we are doing them right now, we are never going to fill that backlog," Abeysuriya says As well as the speed of the development of 3D houses, they also cost significantly less. CNN reported the three-bedroom, two-bathroom homes to be built in
