The first residential building, fully printed on a special-purpose 3D printer, was completed on a turnkey basis in the town of Beckum, in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The pilot project of this kind is a two-storey house with rounded corners, a flat roof and a loggia on the second floor. The living area of the house is 160 square meters in total.
Even in the absence of qualified specialists, the method of 3D printing residential buildings had proven itself to have a number of advantages over traditional construction methods. Made with a special-purpose 3D printer using a specific cement-based compound, results of this project showed some amazing performance. Moreover, the amount of building materials waste, as well as the consumption of cement, was significantly lower with 3D printing in comparison with “traditional” construction of similar-sized buildings.
Ina Scharrenbach, the Minister of Construction of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, was present at the official launch ceremony of this innovative project. She praised the success of this pilot project as a “role model” and expressed her hopes for the further development of 3D printing technology in construction.
It should be noted that the municipal authorities of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia supported this project from the very beginning, even allocating about 200 thousand Euros for its development.
In the recent years, similar projects have already been implemented in other countries around the world, for example, in Holland, Belgium, USA and UAE.
