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Workers check the 3D printing of the first-ever concrete house in Czech Republic, in Ceske Budejovice city. A Czech sculptor has teamed up with a group of architects to create a 3D-printed house prototype that could become a holiday home for the future.
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The house is being printed from special concrete in the southern Czech city of Ceske Budejovice and is planned to float on the Vltava river in Prague in August.
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"I dare say it's the first-ever floating 3D-printed building in the world," said sculptor Michal Trpak (pictured), the mastermind behind the project.
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The design of the house, which can be printed in two days, was inspired by a single-celled creature known as a protozoa, he says.
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As an added attraction, Trpak plans to turn the abode into a floating garden, with plants covering its roof and outside walls. The simple 43-square metre floor plan includes a living room with kitchen, a bedroom and bathroom. Above: Jachym Version, account manager of AMI Communications shows the visualisation of the 3D printing of the concrete house.
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"3D houses will adapt to the people or the countryside. The robot doesn't care about the shape of the curve," Trpak said to the hum of a mechanic hand with a nozzle patiently piling up layer after layer of concrete strips.
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"The house is intended as a leisure-time house to stand in the countryside, ideally for a couple or a small family," added Trpak, who drew inspiration from 3D-printed housing projects in the Netherlands.
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To finance the project, dubbed the "Protozoan", its creators have teamed up with a Czech building society.
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"This one is pretty expensive because it's a prototype and we needed many tests.... But the second generation should cost around three million (Czech) crowns $127,500) and the third generation may cost about half of that amount," Trpak said.
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When the robot is done, the concrete bedroom and bathroom modules will be attached to a wooden core with large windows and completed with a wooden roof.
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The house will then be transported to Prague, installed on a pontoon and displayed on the Vltava river in Prague's broader centre for two months.
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"We didn't have a plot of land to place it on, and anyway, to do that, you need a building permit and that takes up to two years" to secure, said Trpak. "But if you float it on a river, you only need consent from the navigation body, which is much faster."
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Trpak said the construction had not been trouble-free as the concrete is sensitive to temperature changes.
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"When it's very warm it hardens faster, when it's cold it hardens more slowly so now we're adding warm water from a boiler," he added as the weather changed for the worse. "We keep researching and developing. It's a process of trial and error."
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