[Music] the idea of 3d printing our buildings is nothing new [Music] faced with a desperate need to construct more homes faster and in a more efficient way countless innovators have found themselves drawn by the idea of being able to quickly print a structure and have spent years trying to scale the technology but for all their efforts that 3d printed world has proven elusive and many impressive prototypes have struggled to become viable for mass production but things have just taken a massive step forward in germany with the completion of the first ever 3d printed home to
become fully certified under a national government's building regulations [Music] the impact of this moment for construction and for the buildings we all use could be huge with the promise of cutting waste reducing time on site and addressing labor shortages some see 3d printing as the answer to many of our world's challenges originally used for small-scale prototypes advances in 3d printing have led to the creation of full-scale structures like bridges and homes and even plans for mankind's first martian base but while 3d printed structures have appeared around the world from canada and the netherlands to dubai
which wants to 3d print a quarter of its new buildings by 2030 the technology is yet to take off as a widespread building technique but the completion of this 3d printed house in beckham germany is set to change everything developed by leading formwork and scaffolding firm perry experts in its disruptive products and technologies departments and its project partners the structure a detached single family property is the first 3d printed house in germany and offers 160 square meters of living space across its two stories critically the structure is the first 3d printed building in germany to
become certified with a national building accreditation smashing a major barrier and paving the way for larger more complex projects [Music] located just outside the city of um perry's team is now working on the largest 3d printed multi-family house in europe with 380 square meters of living space divided into five apartments across three levels so how did perry get into the world of 3d printing here at perry we have let's let's call it a think tank it's a department called disruptive products and technologies and they think about projects or products and technologies that might substitute our
current core products that might endanger our business model in this department so various ideas are always thrown around and actually actively pursued so it's not just a monitoring department and one of the topics even years ago was 3d construction printing when we build up the printer on a construction site directly on the site and we start sprinting there that was a moment for me which i where i realized that we are printing that on site and people will live in there so that was for me a moment where i really said wow that's not just
um theory and that's not just in a lab it's it could it could happen in in real the homes were both built with cobord's modular bod2 printing system a flexible platform that can be scaled to suit projects of varying size the printer needs just two operators and takes less than 48 hours to set up on site once up and running the system can print as fast as a meter per second using data from integrated design models there's obviously there's been a lot of firms around the world that have done this a lot of research teams
of 3d printed buildings over the years and there's been kind of different levels of excitement around it why isn't it widespread why isn't this just the way that we build all of our buildings 3d printing really affects the overall construction process it has impact on the planning side execution of the walls but also on other trades and and the planning and permitting all of these things come into play here the buildings that we've seen across the globe actually have seen a steady increase in let's say validity so the first ones have been basically kind of
big 3d printed flower pots where all the other trades have been thrown in there but nobody's really thought about how to integrate it into a full construction process maybe sometimes in the news and media that hasn't been it's always been portrayed like everything was perfect but obviously this has been a steady learning curve and now we feel that we've hit another milestone where we've now been able to execute these permitted buildings what perry have done in germany with this building how is that different to what we've seen before in dubai the netherlands you know many
kinds of other places we wanted to do real world architectural scale permitted residential buildings um so we've done lots and lots of tests to to get this german building permit and we have one of the toughest building codes around so that's that's quite a milestone to get these completely normally permitted residential homes and that's i think where the very core difference lies i have included project partners from the start we are working directly with a construction company we're working directly with architects which don't want just to make a demo project the real project where later
people will live in it's a project where the investor sketch rents out every month so it's something which will be used and the other thing is i guess the the speed and the size now it's the the actually the biggest 3d printed building in europe perry also engaged a number of the core trades on these projects a critical hurdle that few other 3d printed buildings have attempted to cross with services and other works already coordinated with the structural design errors on site have been almost completely eradicated saving time money and waste material while the savings
may be modest here they'd soon add up across an entire estate or housing development what kind of real world savings have you seen on this project so far this really this integration of of other trades has a huge impact um so we've had the electrician come into one of these buildings and he walks around and says well guys you know i'll be saving up to like 12 days in here um so we are saving a lot of labor in other trades because there's in the buildings we're executing there's not going to be a single slot
that has to be cut nobody's going to have to drill a hole for a power outlet though the design of these buildings may feel relatively straightforward when compared to some of today's architecture the team are using the lessons learned to construct larger structures in a variety of forms with german building certifications now under their belt the team are planning more projects using different materials and with a focus on further reducing waste but while there is cause for optimism we're still some way from the widespread uptake of 3d printing and several challenges remain not least breaking
into a traditionally conservative industry i mean securing german building certification is a huge step for you guys in a huge step for the world of 3d printing what kind of other challenges and barriers are there on the way between where we are now and this being the way we build our homes buildings offices well it's a lot about educating people really um to know you know it's it's a different type of of planning a building um it's different for the contractor it's different for the electrician it's it's different all around for everybody involved so all
these trades now have to learn a how to cope with this technology and how to make the best of it not be threatened by it but to to see the potential it can have for these individual traits and make their life easier and make construction more safe and more efficient there's definitely a spot for all the other conventional construction techniques who are also evolving so 3d printing will play a very important role we are convinced of that um but this educational diffusion process into the market will still take some time would you live in a
3d printed house god of course right away i'd be all over the design of that um i mean just having round shapes which are also way more sustainable than the weird rectangles we that we build right now um definitely and you know we've tested all of it so we know that it's very very stable while the technology has had its challenges the success of perry's project in germany marks a major step forward and will stand as a powerful case study for innovators rekindling the determination to make this building technique viable at scale that 3d printed
world we've imagined has just moved one huge step closer to becoming real [Music] this video was made possible by perry learn more at the link below and as always if you enjoyed this video and would like to get more from the definitive video channel for construction subscribe to the b1m
