Printable homes represent the latest building wave, but building them isn't always cheap.
Earlier this year, Branch Technology, an architectural startup,a 92-square-meter 3-d printed housing prototype has been developed for about $410,000 - a price too high to be seen as a solution to the global housing crisis.
In March, New Story, a housing nonprofit based in San Francisco, and ICON, a construction-technology company that designs 3D printers, unveiled what they said was "the first permitted, 3D-printed home in America":a 32-square-meter building that cost less than $14,000 and took just 48 hours to build.
While the test run took place in Austin, Texas, the companies plan to produce their first string of homes next year in El Salvador, a country whose rough terrain and frequent floods have made housing construction difficult. From there, they hope to provide safe homes to some of the 1.3 billion people around the world residing in slums.
