Hmm. Do you have an actual number on what % frame building is?
If so, it’s mostly interesting for sky scrapers or infrastructure that have proportionately a lot more deadweight (although reinforcement is also troublesome if using concrete). I suppose it might be easier to get a robot working in a 3D printed frame, too, but that’s another non-trivial technology on top of it.
Average percentage of the building process, pg 3 so about 20% in the US, maybe more if you accept the interior finish. That being said I am highly skeptical this changes the needle, especially in the third world, because almost always if you have the land to build a shack, the cost of the shack isn’t going to keep you on the street.
Fundamentally, developers intuitively understand that building will be just about as profitable in ten years as now, but if you build to much now you will have an ‘oversupply crisis’ and the price as well as the associated profit margin will go down. Similarly, if you build a new building and are selling units very quickly, that means you’re below market price and should raise the price until they just barely sell, because that price jump will more than cover the cost of that apartment being empty for a few months or even years.
This all applies wether you’re in a shanty town in Brazil or in downtown Vancouver, and since even if you snapped your fingers and the cost to build in that shantytown halved it wouldn’t really change, I am really skeptical that even a highly transformative technology could change things, much less an expensive replacement for a few pallets of cinder blocks, a few friends, some drinks, and a weekend.
What you need is something like plentiful public housing providing a minimum quality of house at cost that the market must do better than, but groups like the IMF tend to despise countries doing things like that, because it’s a highly profitable investment when private foreigners do it but a reckless waste of money if the government tries to do the same thing.
Thanks! Very interesting.
I suppose you could print the plumbing directly into a building, but that has obvious maintenance risks.
because almost always if you have the land to build a shack, the cost of the shack isn’t going to keep you on the street.
That’s also thought-provoking. For scavenged sheet metal screwed together I’m guessing it’s always true. Rammed earth is a bit more work, but I don’t know how it compares to cinder block both performance and price-wise.
In any case, a 3D printer imported from the expensive West will take a long time to earn itself back.
