The lack of affordable homes is a huge issue in Kenya, where more than 2 million houses are needed. 3D-printed homes are cost-effective, and are changing the housing landscape.
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00:00 The future of buildings, 3D printed homes in Kenya.
00:06 3D printing is a solution to clear the housing backlog that we face here in Africa and in particular in Kenya,
00:14 where we need to build more than 2 million houses.
00:18 As African cities experience a surge in population, there is an increased pressure to meet housing needs.
00:24 Current estimates point to a shortfall of over 51 million urban housing units.
00:30 It takes us a couple of hours usually to set up the printer.
00:34 We move it in the container.
00:37 It arrived here in Mombasa, we took it to Kilifi, we offloaded the container, we mounted it.
00:44 It took us roughly one day to have that printer mounted.
00:47 And then what we did is just move it from one house to the other, printing every time a different house.
00:53 And in a couple of weeks we were done with those 10 houses here in Kilifi.
00:58 There is a desperate need for mass-produced cost-effective housing.
01:03 And 14 Trees in Kenya has come up with an innovative solution that makes the best use of local resources,
01:10 while producing houses that have an environmental impact that is 70% lower than conventional methods.
01:17 We believe that construction 3D printing is a solution to clear the housing and school backlog in Africa.
01:23 There's more than 50 million houses that need to be built, building houses that are sustainable,
01:30 that are resistant, that are strong and affordable to the African people who need those houses today.
01:36 The 3D printing process is very simple.
01:41 We position a gantry printer on where the house is to be built, and we feed that printer with concrete.
01:49 And the print head positions layers of concrete on top of each other, from the bottom to the top.
01:55 And in a couple of hours you have your walls that are printed by the machine,
02:00 which is of course controlled by a computer, which makes sure that the quality and the specifications of that building are respected.
02:07 3D printing in construction is still a fairly new concept,
02:16 with houses being built in the US, Germany and now across Africa with 14 Trees.
02:34 So this is another row of houses, also combining two bedroom houses and three bedroom houses, semi-detached.
02:42 So you have a two bedroom house on that side and another two bedroom house on this side.
02:47 They have one wall in common.
02:49 What is beautiful with 3D printing is that what you print is precisely the quantity of materials that you need
02:57 for the performance that you need with that building.
03:00 And we save, every time we print, we save 14 Trees. This is the starting point of our company.
03:06 Construction 3D printing eliminates the need for wood, the need for burning bricks, and also reduces the quantity of materials.
03:15 And this is because of that, that we managed to obtain the World Bank's IFC certification for the green performance of that project,
03:22 that we are going to roll out.
03:24 You want to go inside?
03:26 So that's a 76 square meter house. You have the kitchen, the bedrooms.
03:32 You have two bedrooms for the kids and the main en-suite bedroom for the parents.
03:38 We developed a viable ink with our sister company in Kenya, which is a cement company,
03:43 and we developed that ink with them to make sure that the production would be done locally,
03:48 with local cement, local sand, and that product could be reduced in terms of cost
03:53 so that we can print affordable to the Kenyans.
03:57 There's two types of challenges that we faced.
04:11 One was with the ink, because of course we had to adjust the recipe to make sure that the ink works perfectly
04:17 with this temperature, with this beautiful sun that we have here, so we had to adapt.
04:22 The second challenge that we faced is of course the printer.
04:24 Today printers are used in controlled environments where you perfectly control the humidity, the temperature,
04:31 and the weather conditions, basically.
04:33 Well here, we printed on a real site, in real life conditions.
04:38 3D printing is a new way of working. If we can imagine it, we can make it.
04:43 As Africans increasingly seek and adapt technologies that changes the way we do things,
04:48 maybe we will find that we are able to achieve more of our dreams towards a better tomorrow.
04:54 [Music]