The modern house fits perfectly into its wooden environment, and the 3D printing technique used allowed freedom of form, as supposed to use concrete in the traditional way, which would have been very rigid in shape. Instead, fine concrete prints allow you to work with the material in great detail, creating various shapes such as convex, round, or hollow.

There is also another advantage of using concrete printing over concrete poured in the traditional way. With the latter, you are working with a solid material and you tend to use a lot more of it than you need to, which is bad for the environment because the production of cement gives off a lot of greenhouse gases. A concrete printer, on the other hand, only lays concrete where it is needed.

The five printed houses will be located in Bosrijk, in the Meerhoven district of Eindhoven. The site is called the “sculpture garden”. The houses resemble nature’s rocks, with the structure of the walls curving into the roof.

This first unit is fully functional. Each element has been printed separately resulting in fewer cracks as the elements have room to shrink and expand due to temperature changes. With a monolithic structure, that would be a problem.

This first Milestone home is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit, though it feels even more spacious thanks to the rounded walls.

The sustainable and energy efficient home will be occupied in August, and The Milestone project hopes to have all five houses occupied for several decades.