As Americans face soaring costs and an ongoing housing shortage, builders are turning to innovative solutions to help increase housing supply, according to Fast Company. Although challenges such as high initial costs, inconsistent building codes across the U.S., and limited government investment make widespread adoption of these techniques difficult, builders are more commonly looking into new building techniques, such as 3D printing homes, factory-built modular housing, and using hemp-based materials such as "hempcrete" for construction.
Manufactured homes, which are built on a chassis and are not subject to local codes, have seen the most growth compared with other nontraditional building techniques. In fact, approximately 100,000 manufactured homes were shipped to states in 2024, an increase from 60,000 a decade earlier. Modular building and 3D printing are also growing, but there are still hurdles to overcome for these building techniques.
The 3D printers are expensive, and so are the engineers and other skilled employees needed to run them, said Ali Memari, director of the Pennsylvania Housing Research Center, whose work has partly focused on 3D printing. It’s also not recognized by international building codes, which puts up more red tape.
The technology is also generally restricted to single-story structures, unless traditional building methods are used as well, Memari said.
It’s “a technology at its beginning, it has room to grow, especially when it is recognized in code,” Memari said. “The challenges that I mentioned exist, and they have to be addressed by the research community.” Read more
