Jaime Roberts
Dec 30, 2021

Concrete houses never really caught on. At one point Sears catalog sold concrete prefab houses, but they never did well.

From an environmental point of view, concrete production causes about 6% of global CO2 emissions. And concrete needs steel reinforcing and for every pound of steel, two pounds of CO2 emissions are created. For housing, wood is far more sustainable.

This technology may have some limited commercial applications , but I doubt it will have much of an application for most building construction. Precast concrete panels are able to be prefabricated in a factory and mass produced. They are far more economical than 3-D printing.

But this is a great technology to colonize the moon or mars with 3D buildings. Elon Musk should buy the company. Just not a good solution for terrestrial housing.

Jaime Roberts
Jaime Roberts

Written by Jaime Roberts

Architect writing about environmental design in an age of climate change.

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