Who Invented 3D Printed Houses? Pioneering Inventors Named

The origins of using 3D printing for architectural construction and entire houses traces back to the late 1990s and early 2000s from pioneers across academia and industry. Though no single inventor was responsible, several key figures helped develop foundational methods that evolved into modern 3D printed buildings.

Early Inspiration

In the 1990s, developments in automated construction robotics from universities and companies explored early inspiration into leveraging automation for building structures. For example, researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotic Institute developed primitive bricklaying robots.

At the University of South Carolina, Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis envisioned far more advanced applications in the construction industry for robotics. With a background in automated manufacturing, Khoshnevis realized similar techniques could be applied to revolutionize architectural building and housing.

Contour Crafting – Early Concepts

In the early 2000s, Dr. Khoshnevis pioneered one of the first proper 3D printing construction techniques, which he called “Contour Crafting.”

Contour Crafting aimed to use giant, gantry style 3D printers mounted on rails to extrude material layer-by-layer to construct entire house structures in an automated fashion. This included:

Using an extrusion nozzle directly mounted to the gantry printer to deposit thick concrete material
Control systems to coordinate precise movement and material flow
Leveraging architectural CAD models to guide the input geometry

Key Benefits

Several potential advantages over traditional construction methods motivated development of Contour Crafting:

Automation – Reducing reliance on manual labor
Speed – Build rates faster than human crews
Consistency – Improved quality and structural soundness
Affordability – Lowering costs to enable cheaper housing

The ambitious vision was to create affordable, resilient housing solutions for impoverished populations lacking adequate shelter.

Evolution of Core Concepts

While originally focusing on concrete extrusion, researchers found that even thick concrete didn’t provide sufficient structural integrity alone for multi-story buildings. This led to innovations in reinforcement strategies.

For example, integration of thick rebar cages around printed concrete improved stability and strength drastically. Fibrous mixtures using carbon or glass fibers also enhanced printed concrete material properties.

Software and hardware customization became instrumental for coordinating precise positioning and material flow behavior from pumps to extrusion nozzles as well.

Concepts from Contour Crafting would help shape many 3D printing construction methods to follow.

Early Partnerships

In the mid 2000s, Dr. Khoshnevis partnered with leading construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc. to further develop Contour Crafting prototypes towards deployment for practical buildings.

University research collaborations with USC centered around refining the techniques also helped progress capabilities.

Branching Innovation

While pioneering Contour Crafting at USC, Dr. Khoshnevis also advised graduate students exploring independent ideas leveraging 3D printing for construction.

One of those students was Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis in the early 2000s. Fascinated by automated manufacturing principles applied to architecture, Khoshnevis received guidance from Dr. Khoshnevis before spearheading her own research in China.

Chinese Innovation

In 1999, Professor Yingchun Fan began conducting early small-scale R&D into construction scale 3D printing at the Tsinghua University Architectural Design & Research Institute.

Her team experimented with custom gantry style printers depositing fast setting cementitious mixtures layer-by-layer to fabricate structural components.

By 2009, working with the construction firm Winsun, Professor Fan’s team had further evolved methods to print concrete sections for houses. This included key enhancements compared to original Contour Crafting:

Faster print heads – Enabling much higher deposition rates
Advanced mixing – Optimizing concrete mixtures for quicker curing
Better pumping – Improved material delivery for reliability

First 3D Printed House – CNBC

First Printed Houses

Using their enhanced scale 3D printing process, Winsun went on to pioneer the first printed houses entirely constructed from printed components.

In 2014, Winsun built a printed mansion and 6 story apartment building, establishing feasibility for multi-floor printed dwellings.

Winsun would continue to iterate and build numerous printed houses over the coming years. Their methods spread globally, including the Russian company Apis Cor who went on to print the first single story printed dwelling in just 24 hours in 2016.

Ongoing Evolution

In subsequent years, global firms like cobod and ICON continued improving 3D construction printing equipment, materials, and reliability to new levels.

By the early 2020s, integrated rebar, advanced software, precise quality control, and specialized concrete mixtures enabled complex printed layouts. Entire communities of printed homes are now possible.

And future innovations seem poised to unlock geometries, automation levels, and applications never feasible with conventional building.

In Summary

No single inventor can be credited for 3D printed houses. But the critical concepts and pioneering work by researchers in the 1990s and 2000s evolved into the technologies changing construction today.

Figures like Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, Professor Yingchun Fan, Winsun, and others combined ideas across robotics, manufacturing, civil engineering, and architecture to propel automated 3D printing processes for houses from vision to reality.

Their founding innovations disruptive potential is only starting to be realized to enable the next generation of architectural design and affordable, sustainable housing worldwide.

Printable Concrete

Who Invented 3D Printed Houses?