The future of architecture is here: Detroit's first 3D-printed house is complete

With a slash of a golden ribbon, Detroit’s first 3D-printed house is finally ready to hit the real estate market.

The 988-square-foot, two-bedroom house at 1444 Sheridan in Detroit’s Islandview neighborhood was dreamed up by Citizen Robotics and Develop Architecture and set to stone in a little more than three years, from its start as just a 3D design to printing its building blocks and finally to the construction and completion of the home.

According to Citizen Robotics, automation and 3D printing are the future of architecture.

"All other industries are using automation. ... Why not homebuilding?" said Fernando Bales, the built-lab manager for Citizen Robotics and the builder of record for the house.

The modernized process uses less labor, fewer expenses, less waste and even less noise while utilizing more sustainable materials to produce a home that has greater disaster resilience and lower utility costs for residents.

At its start, the home received a $160,000 grant from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority's Neighborhood Stabilization Program to cover cost of construction materials.

Bryan Cook of Develop Architecture designed the house using a digital 3D model that allowed Citizen Robotics to generate all surfaces from the exact model. Then the project went on to printing at Citizen Robotics' facility in southwest Detroit, where a robot arm placed layer after layer of cementitious 3D-printable mortar to create building blocks for all the exterior walls.

Construction began in October 2022 after the wall segments were brought to the site. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing contractors came along one-by-one, and the team added an Exterior Insulation Finish System (EIFS) to add insulation and a stucco finish to the exterior. To polish the house off, they added dark windowpanes, siding, 3D-printed flower beds and a pea-green coat of paint. The project concluded with a certificate of occupancy in January 2024.

Read more about the process of building the 3D-printed house: Michigan's 1st 3D printed home built in Detroit by Citizen Robotics

From start to finish, the house took about a year and three months to complete.

"Put us next to a stick-framing construction company, they'll beat us flat out any day, but that's not really important to us because what we're putting up is a better wall system. Our walls with just the printed mortar and the insulation foam that goes in it are airtight," Bales said. "Overall, we think the product we have here is a much more resilient home. It's termite-proof, fireproof, waterproof, so this house is going to last a lot longer, but the main benefit we think is the energy efficiency of the home."

Bales says the homeowner would only have to invest in solar panels on the roof and it would be enough to power the entire house — even in the Michigan climate. Furthermore, the roof was constructed with structural insulated roof (SIP) panels that were created by a digital fabrication process that turn the house into even more of an airtight, temperature-regulated box.

On the inside, the house contains two more 3D-printed walls that are textured and curved for design; all other interior walls are conventionally stick-framed.

The price of the home, dictated by Michigan State Housing Development Authority's Neighborhood Stabilization Program, is capped at $224,500 and is sold through Keller Williams Realty.

"It's a brand-new house, it's energy-efficient, it's got all new appliances in it, so we do think the value is there," Bales said. "We hear a lot about how the median cost of a home in Detroit right now is $80,000, but that's not a fair comparison. For an $80,000 house in the city, you're probably going to dump about $150,000-200,000 into that home to get it livable and comfortable enough to even begin to compare to what we have here."

Bales says that any future 3D-printed houses that Citizen Robotics builds could have cost savings up to 30%, and that as this new method of home-building expands, costs will continue to drop drastically as the process becomes clearer and more understood.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit's first 3D-printed house is ready for a homeowner