Rancho Mirage obtains the first 3D printed housing community in the United States
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Rancho Mirage, the desert game town dotted with resorts and golf courses, is poised to enter the 21st century. The Palari development group has just named it the site of the country’s first 3D printed community, which is expected to be completed next spring.
The Coachella Valley community will cover five acres and include 15 eco-friendly homes, all of which will be made from 3D printed panels by Mighty Buildings, an Oakland-based construction technology company.
Each property will feature a 1,450 square foot three bedroom, two bathroom home on 10,000 square feet of land with a pool and deck for $ 595,000. A few will also have a 700 square foot secondary suite with two bedrooms and a bathroom for $ 850,000.
They also offer high-tech Darwin wellness systems by New York-based Delos with water filtration and circadian lighting. Optional upgrades include a pergola, cabin, hot tub, fire pit, and outdoor shower.
The presale campaign began in late February and sold out within days, with buyers paying $ 1,000 to reserve a seat, said Palari general manager Basil Starr.
âIt was reassuring to see such demand for these homes,â Starr said, adding that most of the buyers were tech-savvy millennials with a passion for sustainability. Palari accepted cryptocurrency for deposits and two buyers paid in bitcoin.
The construction will only take a few months, but the project has taken years. Alexey Dubov co-founded Mighty Buildings in 2017, and since then he and his company of over 100 employees have developed 3D printing technology and become certified by UL, the company that tests safety and standards. durability.
What was once a 7,900 square foot garage in Redwood City has evolved into a 79,000 square foot warehouse in Oakland that uses robots to print a composite material invented by the company called Light Stone Material. Synthetic stone hardens when exposed to ultraviolet light, making it both stronger and lighter than concrete, with a longevity of over 70 years.
âIt feels like a worktop in a kitchen. Because it is lighter, we reduce transportation costs, âDubov said. He added that the material is also more thermally efficient than concrete, reducing the energy required to maintain the temperature of the house.
The community of 15 homes will be Mighty Buildings’ largest project by far.
The company delivered its first 3D printed panels last January and has created around 10 homes since, but the plant will pump homes out at a breakneck pace in the future. It is currently behind schedule for the rest of the year and secured $ 40 million in funding last month, which Dubov says will be used to boost manufacturing capacity.
For the Rancho Mirage project, the houses are delivered as a kit and fit together like Lego bricks. Mighty Buildings produces the interior and exterior walls, which come with connectors so that they can be easily assembled on site.
Starr said a typical project of this scale would take around three years, but they don’t plan for more than a year and a half as his team can work on the foundations and roads in parallel with Mighty Buildings printing the material for the houses. . He said the houses would take a month to install, compared to three to six months with traditional methods.
Palari emphasizes sustainability, and Starr said current buyers feel the same. In search of a home building partner for the project, he visited 20 factories, but ended up suing Mighty Buildings for its advanced technology and UL certification.
A typical wood-frame house requires cutting the wood to the right size, and the leftovers often end up in a landfill, while 3D printers generate the exact material needed. In addition, the automated process uses 95% less manpower as the robots create the panels.
âWe did not focus on sustainability in construction. The only goal was to build for less, which created this wood-frame construction system, âStarr said.
The coronavirus slowed the project down slightly, but it also opened up the option for buyers to live in a place like Rancho Mirage, which is generally known as a resort town with a rapidly changing population depending on the season.
âThe pandemic has shifted the preferences of buyers from condos to single-family homes. A lot of people are working from home and considering new locations like Rancho Mirage, and that adds to the value of those homes, âStarr said.
Beverly Hills-based Palari chose Rancho Mirage for its proximity to LA and relatively cheap land, and the city itself supported the company’s sustainability goals. Going forward, Palari plans communities elsewhere in the Coachella Valley, as well as in northern and central California and the San Fernando Valley.
âOur big target is California,â Starr said. âIt is the largest single-family home market in the world.
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