3D-printed house to become holiday home in the future

A Czech sculptor has teamed up with a group of architects to create a 3D-printed-house prototype that could become a holiday home for the future.

Special concrete is used to print the house in the southern Czech city of Ceske Budejovice and is scheduled to float on the Vltava river in Prague in August.

“I dare say it’s the first-ever floating 3D-printed building in the world,” said sculptor Michal Trpak, the mastermind behind the project.

The design of the house, which can be printed in two days, was inspired by a single-celled creature known as a protozoa, he said.

As an added attraction, Trpak plans to turn the abode into a floating garden with plants covering its roof and outside walls.

The simple 43-square-meter floor plan includes a living room, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.

“3D houses will adapt to the people or the countryside. The robot doesn’t care about the shape of the curve,” he said to the hum of a mechanical hand with a nozzle patiently piling up layer after layer of concrete strips. “The house is intended as a leisure-time house to stand in the countryside, ideally for a couple or a small family.”

Trpak said he drew inspiration from 3D-printed housing projects in the Netherlands.

To finance the project dubbed the “Protozoan,” its creators have teamed up with a Czech building society.

“This one is pretty expensive because it’s a prototype and we needed many tests, but the second generation should cost around 3 million (Czech) crowns (US$127,500),” he said.