Wood Framing,3D Printing Come Together in Houston Home

Brief 

A two-story home that blends traditional wood framing and 3D printing is under construction in Houston. Architectural design and research studio Hannah said the 4,000 square-foot home will be the first multistory home to be 3D-printed in the US.

Insight

HANNAH, an Architectural League Prize–winning experimental design and research studio led by Cornell University assistant professors of architecture Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic, has announced that construction work is underway in Houston on a story-story, 4,000-square-foot single-family home that, when completed, will stand as the first 3D-printed multistory structure in the United States.

Serving as architectural designer and project planner, HANNAH is joined by the U.S. arm of Germany’s Peri 3D Construction and local design-build firm CIVE, Inc. in the role of project engineer and general contractor.

The first-of-its-kind project is a hybrid one that marries 3D printing technology with conventional wood framing methods in an approach that “allows the two material systems to be used strategically and aims to increase the applicability of 3D printing in the U.S., where framing is one of the most common construction techniques,” the project team described in a statement.

Specifically, the structure is comprised of printed spatial cores produced by a gantry-style COBOD BOD2 printer that contain stairs and functional spaces; these printed elements are connected to the wood framing to “produce an architectural alternation of concrete and framed interiors.

As noted by the project team, the design for this 3D-printed Texan abode is a scalable one and the hybridized construction methods can be applied to efforts beyond single-family housing, including multifamily and mixed-use projects.

“For the design of the project, we developed a hybrid construction approach that couples innovations in concrete 3D printing with traditional wood framing techniques to create a building system that is structurally efficient, easily replicable, and materially responsive,” elaborated Lok and Zivkovic.