A Japanese startup is selling ready-to-move-in 3D printed small homes for €35,000. Would such a thing ever take off in Ireland?

by lughnasadh

37 comments

  1. It looks like they cut a hole in a big pile of printer paper

  2. Yes and it’s already a thing. You can buy fully built prefabricated homes for that price already. See log cabin homes. There is no need to 3D print homes

  3. Probably not, most Irish people are very precious about their houses. We still look down on apartments and apartment dwellers. I’d jump at it though, could buy it mortgage free right now! I’m not fussy about having lots of space or lots of things, just want a secure roof over my head.

  6. 3D printing doesn’t seem like the best way to build a home.

    3D printing is about extruding from ONE toolhead. It is great for customisation. It has no parallelism, it’s not about mass production.

    Surely the better way to build cheap homes is in factories. We can mass-produce tens of thousands of clip-together girders with massive parallelism.

    https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=AhLk7L1B_fE

  7. I don’t really see the point. You could do a far nicer job with prefabrication and fully or partially modularised buildings, which can use computer aided manufacturing, robotics and production systems anyway.

    3D printing isn’t a solution to absolutely evening everything.

  9. 3d printing homes is not a good idea, it’s a gimmick. Imagine the mould that could grow in those gaps. Sdl 3d is not food safe for this reason, and probably never will be. I wouldn’t live in one if you gave it to me for free.

    State of those layer lines.

  10. I’d live in a caravan at this stage but sure it’s not allowed.

  11. People already look down on those who live in apartments, so these have no chance!

  12. Great idea till they all start to fall down after a year or 2.

  13. Sounds like a decent idea tbh. I feel like we need innovative solutions to address the problem of housing.

  14. With the all the taxes would be 200k plus 7k for the lawyer.

  15. It’s wall to wall complaints about garden sheds turned into studios, but this concrete blob is ok? K.

  18. I’ve been living in Tokyo for 14 years now.

    Overall, that home makes sense here.

    If it _“meets European insulation standards”_ it’s already a lot more appealing than most Japanese homes.

    It’s a bungalow targeting couples over 60 – we have the infamous aging crisis.

    It’s price is equivalent to 2.5-4 years rent for a similarly priced apartment in Tokyo, so if you have some land, it would work.

    Their site says something like “replace your house as frequently as you replace your car” – obviously environmentally dubious, but a lot of homes here are not built to be permanent – rebuilding after 30 years is very common, so if you’ve only got 20 years of life left, maybe not worth blowing all your savings.

    All new homes (in Tokyo at least) need to have solar panels – they seem to be included in the price here.

    By the way, it doesn’t seem to be completed yet – I think there is a weatherproof coating to go on top of what you can see in that image.

    Modern prefabricated homes of some kind seem like they are the only solution to deal with the housing crisis in Ireland. I’d say this could at least be _one of_ the solutions.

  19. Makes a profit for developers, out of character with local area, not in scope of community development plan laid out in 1996, modern day tenements, objection by local social democratic councillor, denied planning permission.

  21. Well if it looked like jax roll, likely acted like jax roll in terms of IP ratings, and generally was a shite material, ye be fucked. Im all for novel ideas and thinking outside the box so i get where you’re coming from too. Id live in anything myself at the moment, if it meant security of a roof

  22. No, these come up every few weeks as the saviors to the housing crisis. They all ignore the fact that the thing that makes houses expensive is not the house itself but the land. If you follow the logical conclusion of people buying these extremely low density houses, that just makes the problem worse by making land more scarce.

  23. Might be better using pre-constructed timber frame houses. Can be mass made off site and transported to the location. I’d love to say these could/would be cheaper than concrete/brick houses but ya know…Ireland…

  24. Call me old fashioned but I prefer good old blocks and a concrete poured floor. I mean technically you could build a house out of pallets or use steel shipping containers? I’m just not sure people would want to live in it?

  25. Honestly not a terrible ideo, but you would immediately have some arsehole moaning about how they reuin the aesthetic of a place, oddly in a way that rampant homelessness doesn’t.

    Something like that would personally not suit me as I’m young, have a partner and will be staring a family in the next few years, but for older folks with limited resources, single folks looking to save costs. potentially genius.

  26. Yeah id probably buy a few and rent them out to people who dont have 35k for 3k a month

  27. They just refused a 8 store apartment building in limerick because it is “too high”, i doubt they would accept anything that can solve a housing crisis

  30. Fun fact: most Japanese houses depreciate in value, to zero, after 30 years.

  31. No because the planning departments won’t allow it in this country. Well that’s a whole new conversation.

  32. I’ll be interested when they start printing land to build on

  33. No, apparently all Irish homes have to have room for a family of 5, and a garden big enough for a pony. There are no single people or couples looking for accommodation on their own, they enjoy the excitement of sharing a house full of strangers.

  34. There’s many similar things available all over the world. The issue with them is that Ireland doesn’t seem to be particularly welcoming when it comes to planning permissions that go outside the norm. Even getting a bog standard wooden blockbuild up and insured here can be a mission cause it’s supposedly a fire hazard to have a wooden house. Depends on the county as well obviously, but overall, it’s a lot of red tape.

  35. Considering we can make flatpack and wooden houses for about the same price I doubt this will take off here.

    We should invest in cheaper constructions but not 3d printed

  36. A strong gust on a high hill would have you emigrated to Spain if you lived in one of those yokes.

    Might still be better than ryanair, but I think I’ll leave it off for the moment.

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