House of Cores (2024-04)¶

Deep collaboration between industry, practice, and academia is needed to comprehensively respond to global resource challenges and to co-develop new, integrated, applied, and resource-efficient models for construction. House of Cores, expected to complete construction in 2024, is the first fully permitted two-storey 3D-printed home in the US (Fig. 1). The research project is the result of a multi-year collaboration between HANNAH, PERI 3D Construction, and CIVE, as well as several building industry partners. House of Cores is designed as a hybrid material structure of concrete and timber framing, establishing a flexible construction system that can be readily adapted to multi-family housing in the US. The project expands on prior work by the collaborators such as: (1) PERI’s 3D Printed House in Beckum (Weger et al., 2021), which was the first printed house in Germany, a two-storey concrete structure with 3D-printed loadbearing walls, half-slab flooring, and a system of steel-reinforced semi-precast concrete elements; (2) HANNAH’s Ashen Cabin (Lok and Zivkovic, 2020), an experimental building that synthesises a 3D-printed substructure with a robotically fabricated wood envelope; and (3) research projects such as Additive Architectural Elements (Zivkovic and Lok, 2018), RRRolling Stones (Zivkovic and Lok, 2021), and the first 3D-printed apartment building in Germany (PERI, 2020). The 375m2 House of Cores illustrates the possibilities of in-situ 3D construction printing technology, mass customisation, and design solutions that integrate conventional construction methods. The project is printed using the COBOD BOD2 gantry printer and takes advantage of the printer’s modularity for its programmatic residential layout on an urban plot (Fig. 2). The project serves as an active testing ground for (1) 3D print process and logistics optimisation, (2) material sustainability evolution including a transformation from mortar printing to concrete printing with aggregates, (3) innovations in design and mass customisation, (4) a mix of on-site and off-site 3D-printed construction, (5) structural innovations in relation to printing logistics and the integration of wood framing through critical details, (6) the integration of various associated trades, and (7) permits and on-site inspection schedules. In this process, the project establishes a logistical and design ecosystem for 3Dprinted construction that exhibits many successes and scores of productive failures, highlighting that radical technology application in the AEC industries requires embracing an ethos of collaborative continuous learning.