The first 3D-printed house in the Czech Republic will float

The structure will create up to 20 per cent less CO2 than an equivalent brick building, and several times less construction and demolition waste

Spotted: Prvok, a 3D-printed small home on a pontoon, will be the Czech Republic’s first piece of printed architecture. As a co-creation by sculptor Michal Trpak and building society Stavebni Sporitelna Ceske Sporitelny, the house will be erected next month and printed in 48 hours, demonstrating a construction technique aiming to be seven times faster and half the cost of building a brick house.

The demonstration house will be built on a floating pontoon, with asymmetric, layered walls mimicking a futuristic sci-fi film and a wooden deck. Inside will consist of a fairly small living space for two, with a floor area of 43 square meters including a bedroom, living room/kitchen and a bathroom.

The Prvok od Burinky home will be built layer-by-layer using a robot arm repurposed from the automotive industry. This arm will deposit the concrete at a rate of 15cm per second. 

A specially formulated concrete mixture enriched with nano-polypropylene fibres improves plasticity and provides the freeform from right angles or straight lines.  Within 24 hours, this concrete will set to standard house foundation hardness, and after 28 days it will be as strong as the foundations of a bridge. The structure and materials are designed to hold up for 100 years.

Truly embodying what it means to be a house of the future, it will be equipped with eco-technologies such as recuperation, recirculation shower, remote control, a green roof and reservoirs for drinking, utility and sewage water.

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