{"id":33226,"date":"2018-11-13T16:43:55","date_gmt":"2018-11-13T21:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/does-a-3-d-printing-startup-have-a-solution-to-the-affordable-housing-epidemic\/"},"modified":"2018-11-13T16:45:16","modified_gmt":"2018-11-13T21:45:16","slug":"does-a-3-d-printing-startup-have-a-solution-to-the-affordable-housing-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/does-a-3-d-printing-startup-have-a-solution-to-the-affordable-housing-epidemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Does a 3-D Printing Startup Have a Solution to the Affordable Housing Epidemic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does additive manufacturing have the potential to resolve the affordable housing epidemic in our country? Dr. Berok Khoshnevis from the University of Southern California and founder of Contour Crafting (\u201cContour\u201d) certainly believes so. He is currently working on completing a robot that uses additive manufacturing to create structures with applications ranging from housing construction to space colonialization. Additive manufacturing, commonly referred to as 3-D printing, is the process of creating 3-D items using digital code and this advance in manufacturing is emerging as a megatrend affecting industries from fashion to medicine. However, instead of printing plastic objects, Contour plans to print buildings with a computer-controlled robot that creates hollow walls and then fills them with concrete until the structure on the code is complete. Critics argue that 3-D printing will only serve a niche market within the construction industry allowing for new architectural experimentation, but Contour believes differently as it seeks to harness the technology to drive social change.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Contour Crafting is focused on using 3-D printing to transform the construction industry by reducing costs, saving time and increasing accessibility. Some of the key cost components of a development project include raw materials, financing expenses and labor costs, and Contour\u2019s 3-D printing approach proclaims to be more cost efficient compared to traditional construction by achieving cost savings in each category. The 3-D printing approach eliminates waste of raw materials because each raw material is close to 100% utilization due to the precision from the computer enabled machine. By comparison, traditional construction creates over $30 billion in wasted raw materials annually since resources are not utilized as efficiently.[ii]<\/a> 3-D printing can also shorten the project length from months to one day and thus reduces the required financing costs needed to fund the project as well as the opportunity cost of pursuing the project. Finally, 3-D printing reduces the amount of physical labor needed to complete a project and instead requires more \u201cintellectual\u201d labor to supervise the machine and construction progress. As a result of these cost savings, Contour believes it can construct a house for $50 per square foot compared to $150 per square foot for traditional construction in a fraction of the time.[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n