After the first 3D printed house, they want to “print” communities | Report

In Havelar, in Vila do Conde, houses are not built with stone, brick or tiles. There is also no need for scaffolding, concrete mixers or construction workers. Here, all you need is a 3D printer and five people to build a house.

On the company’s land is the first printed house in Portugal, explains Rafael Matias, who gives the guided tour. It took 18 hours (not continuous) to have walls and two weeks to be finished with everything a house should have — from windows to decoration. It has two bedrooms, kitchen, living room and bathroom. The walls, rough and slightly rounded, are made of a mass of concrete and filled with cork granules to, says the mechanical engineer, “guarantee thermal and sound insulation to the house”. Next door, and still under construction, is another house with smoother, lighter walls.

“This house is as durable as any other building”, he reinforces before opening the door. The idea was thought up by founders Patrick Eichiner, José Maria Ferreira and Rodrigo Vilas-Boas, architect at the OODA studio.

Inside the model home, there is no sign of the noise of the printer that continues to work just a few meters from the living room window. Rafael Matias says that it is “a house ready to live in” and states that this will also be the case with the remaining 130 homes that the Havelar wants to make it available this year, says José Maria Ferreira.

A two-bedroom house measuring 90 square meters costs 150 thousand euros, already equipped with kitchen furniture and appliances. The value, the founder believes, is “competitive” when compared to other houses on the market — a house with the same characteristics, but built with brick and stone, “is around 300 thousand euros”, he says.

Here the houses are made in large quantities at a time, because “when the machine starts printing it’s like an assembly line that doesn’t stop”. Only by printing “30 or 40” houses at once are they “profitable and competitive”, explains José Maria Ferreira. Here the idea is not to build just one house at a time, but rather to “build communities”, to print several identical houses in the same place and, preferably, in areas with access to other services such as schools, kindergartens, libraries and supermarkets.

Print now. Using materials 100 years later

The initial plan is to use concrete mass for printing. But by 2030, there are two more goals to meet: reducing the carbon footprint and using sustainable materials to print houses. On this last point, the company from the town of Vilar do Pinheiro is testing the potential of clay, earth, sand, coconut fiber, lime, linseed and even rice husks.

Pedro Monteiro is an architect, but compares his work to that of a cook. He is responsible for mixing materials extracted from the earth and adding a “percentage of each ingredient” to the recipe to see if it works. In this case, result means that the combinations become a solid block capable of supporting a house for years.

“If I build a house now and after 100 years I want to rebuild the building, I can use materials that I used to print the walls, return them to nature or use them in other markets”, he highlights.

He arrived at Havelar in January, a year after the company was created, but has already been working on testing materials for several years. After graduating, he emigrated to France and then Switzerland, countries where, he says, these ecological materials have been used for a long time in building houses. He was a locksmith, carpenter and builder of earth-based buildings. Portugal is now taking its first steps in this new market.

A few meters from the model house is the laboratory where he spends his days. In one of the rooms there is a shelf with jars of various colors and sizes and small blocks of already cooked materials. Some are smoother, others are harder and some fall apart slightly if you run your finger through them.

According to the architect, they are just prototypes, primarily because the ones that fall apart would never be used to print houses. On the opposite side of the division are models of the houses that Havelar wants to print.

The first, designed by the OODA studio, is the one that exists in real size. The others are also T2 and were designed by architects Glória Cabral, Kengo Kuma, Manuel Aires Mateus or Álvaro Siza Vieira.

Next to the model house, Rafael and Pedro’s colleagues prepare the printer to print other concrete pieces. At the moment, they are testing new lines and geometric shapes by printing vases, benches, planters or sculptures.

The one being printed is made of circles and several layers. The outside is less rough than the inside and the concrete used has more gravel which gives it a lighter tone. Next to the lawn is a bench for two people that the printer also made and on top of the company’s reception desk is a vase.

“These pieces are made with leftover concrete that we used to print houses. We test the mixture before starting and wait for it to be solid. What is not used is reused, for example to make outdoor furniture”, points out Rafael Matias.