Chinese Company “Prints” Ten Houses in One Day

Many historians can tell you that the Chinese invented typesetting hundreds of years before Gutenberg, and now it appears that a company from the Middle Kingdom is leading the way in printing whole houses.

Shanghai’s WinSun Decoration Design is now showing off photos and a video demonstrating the firm’s ability to use 3D printing to create ten new dwellings from recycled materials and waste construction waste in less than 24 hours.

While 3D printing purists will say that the homes, which are printed as panels and then joined together, don’t truly qualify as printed products because of the final assembly process, the company’s management beg to differ.

“We don’t see what their problem is,” a WinSun manager told the local press. “The parts, such as frame, wall were printed separately. The parts dry quickly and can then be assembled into a complete house.”

Giant Printer Makes 200 Square Metre Homes

The “construction” process relies on a 32-meter long, 10-meter wide, and 6.6-meter high printer, which spits out each component of the new homes. The 200 square metre dwellings are made of a combination of construction waste, metal tailings, and industrial waste.

Because the home building process uses inexpensive materials and involves little labour, the builder say that the new homes can be created for a cost of RMB 29,500 (U$4,800) each. The ten houses created during the day’s batch are currently located in suburban Shanghai’s Qingpu district.

Winsun CEO Ma Yihe was quoted in the local press as saying that real estate devloper Tomson Group has approached him about building an entire villa using the company’s process. WinSun is also planning to build 100 factories nationwide to start producing the “ink” necessary to “print” its buildings.

(Sorry viewers in China, but you’ll need a VPN or a leased line to watch the video).