Conjuring customized homes globally

In 17 days, just one printer operator created 17 all-white offices with futuristic designs, marked by huge virtual-reality or VR glasses, and complete with ready-for-use interior decor.

That was possible thanks to a supersized 3D printer 36 meters long, 12 meters wide and 6 meters high.

"The 17 offices, all different from each other, were tailor-made for our client from the United Arab Emirates. They were all made from the special concrete researched and developed by our company," said Ma Yihe, president of Shanghai-based Yingchuang Building Technique (Shanghai) Co Ltd.

Taking an area of about 250 square meters, the offices were designed by US design and architecture firm Gensler, which had also designed Shanghai Tower, China's tallest building.

Gensler's new creations represent the world's first office complex built using the 3D printing technology.

It not only shortened the construction time by up to 70 percent but lowered labor cost by up to 80 percent on average, the Beijing Daily reported. The total construction and labor cost came to about $140,000.

The use of 3D printing "in the property market has broadened developers' vision. Traditional construction now becomes an option, and is no longer obligatory", said Yan Yuejin, director of the Shanghai E-House Real Estate Research Center.

It took Ma and his team 14 years to master their current building technology.

"I happened to visit a traditional construction site, where the construction waste and exhausted workers at the site set me thinking a lot. I wondered that when the construction of automobiles and aircraft could be completed by machines, why couldn't we use a machine to build a house," said Ma.

In 2002, Ma set up Yingchuang and led a team to research and develop a machine that can build houses and offices. In 2008, they printed the first piece of wall. By 2015-end, they had further fine-tuned their technology, making it sophisticated enough to print a house complete in all respects, including interior decor.

Yingchuang is proud that its technology, in addition to offering efficiency and lower cost compared with traditional construction, is a zero-emission, zero-waste process. "Usually, building 10,000 sq m of regular buildings creates 800 tons of construction waste," he said.

The company is now accelerating industrialization of its technology. Over the next five years, it will put in place more than 200 of its giant printer plants globally. It aims to have 20 plants by the end of this year worldwide, including in Germany, Australia, Israel and Africa.

"Printed housing taps into people's need for better quality and personalized living spaces, as each of them can be tailor-made," said Yan.