Iowa State University researchers are planning to build their first demonstration 3D-printed model home over the next year, with completion expected in the spring of 2026.
“I think as a model home, we can run it through some simulations and understand the construction typology,” said Pete Evans, assistant professor in the ISU industrial design department. “I think being able to at least understand the construction and how that operates over a course of a year is the goal.”
Evans said he didn’t have an understanding of the cost yet, but said the university is working on partnerships to build multiple versions of 3D-printed homes that are not yet formalized.
The project is part of the Iowa Innovative Housing Project, also known as the 3D Affordable Innovative Technologies Housing Project, which aims to address the shortage of affordable housing in Iowa by exploring faster, more cost-efficient solutions through the use of 3D-printed homes.
The project is funded through a bundle of four Iowa Economic Development Authority grants equaling about $2.1 million.
The grants have funded several 3D printing efforts, fueled by three 3D printers that ISU purchased — one at a lab on campus that has been doing “furniture sized testing” and some material testing as well, Evans said. At Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge, ISU has two machines that provide prototyping capabilities — one with a 7-foot build size and a larger machine that has an 11-foot build size, Evans said.
The 3D-printed demonstration home might be located in Fort Dodge, but that isn’t nailed down yet, Evans said.
On the model home, ISU is partnering with the Nemetschek Group, a provider of software solutions for architecture, engineering, and construction, to use its digital twin technology, which creates an identical, interactive digital model that will progress with the construction of the structure. The technology incorporates live sensors that provide real-time data about air quality and energy consumption, according to a news release.
“I can be in here in Ames and I can log on to that website, and that website can tell me what’s happening on site,” Evans said. “You can sequence that all the way to the end of the built construction phase.”
Educating the industry about 3D-printed home construction and the use of digital twins is part of ISU’s plan.
“We can have safer homes, less expensive homes, more efficient homes, more affordable homes,” Evans said. “And digital twins are a piece of that.”
“The intent is to make sure that we are illustrating and testing these new capabilities for residential construction, to be able to illustrate workforce capabilities, educational training and financial impacts,” Evans added. “There has been a lot of hype around 3D construction printing and we’ve been trying to uncover it … Understanding the impacts for sustainability and digital twins is one of the pieces that helps us to measure that throughout the process in a way that can be implemented by anyone running a project like this.”
Other 3D-printed home efforts
Several other efforts across Iowa have put 3D-printed construction to the test.
Hamburg, Iowa served as an initial site for research, development, simulation and study of the impact of affordable 3D-printed housing, but the project never came to fruition due to issues with the developer, said Dana Sorensen, associate principal with BNIM, a design company with locations in Kansas City and Des Moines.
Sorensen was part of a group that collaborated with ISU with the hope of bringing 3D-printed homes to Hamburg.
In 2023, Muscatine also pursued bringing 3D-printed homes for its community. The Community Foundation of Greater Muscatine knew the city was in dire need of housing, so it bought four lots in a newer subdivision and started the process of constructing 3D-printed homes, said Ron Monahan, director of housing initiatives at the foundation.
After an RFP process, the foundation partnered with Alquist 3D, which does concrete 3D printing.
On the first house, contractors built the walls but they had cracks in them, so the decision was made to tear it down, Monahan said.
“Our commitment was a quality home someone would live in,” he said. “When we saw the cracking, we didn’t think we could get the quality housing.”
After a second and third attempt to build the walls of the house, “it was time to move on,” he said.
The problem, Monahan said, “came down to materials.”
“There are a number of different printer types,” he said. “Most of what you see are gantry systems. The printer we used here had one arm – its reach was not as far. The concrete has less time to set … [and] additives are used to make it cure faster. That was part of the issue.”
Zachary Mannheimer is board chair and founder of Alquist 3D, which he started at the end of 2020. He’s based in Iowa City and the company headquarters is in Greeley, Colo.
“The two parties disagreed and Alquist decided to move on after the community,” Mannheimer said of the project.
Monahan said Muscatine has not given up on 3D printing. After the first attempt, a private foundation stepped forward and provided funding to continue 3D-printing research, he said, declining to say how much the donation was.
Part of the funding will help the foundation build its own 3D printer, which will be built at Muscatine Community College. They hope to have the printer built this year, he said.
The foundation aims to build homes long-term, but they plan to build a park bench and a small shed first. Monahan said an “ambitious” goal would be to 3D print a structure sometime in 2026.
“Ultimately, the funder wants to build to homes,” he said.
The foundation is continuing to look at alternative ways to build homes that lower the cost of ownership, he said.
“And the other thing [we] want to accomplish is to make everything we do open source … so others can just grab it and go use it,” he said. “We think we’re [at] the tip of the iceberg. We do think costs can be driven down as we all learn more about it.”
At Iowa State, researchers and students built a 10-foot tall research shed in early 2024 that included six different panels that were 3D printed, Evans said.
“It was a really small type of experiment to just say, ‘OK, these are different building systems. Let’s put them together and see what happens,’” Evans said. “It was a design effort in terms of understanding some of the constructability, the components coming together from these new types of 3D construction printing and windows and different types of things.”
One focus of ISU researchers has been the weather implications of 3D printing with Iowa’s daily change in temperature, plus humid summers.
“We need to be able to understand what the construction implications are, so that as the daily weather affects this, we can adjust the way that this construction happens,” he said.
Evans said the materials in 3D printing are “really finicky.” As the temperature changes throughout the day, different protocols are attempted so the material can “set up and behave as expected.”
“There’s a base concrete mix, which is sand, cement, aggregate water, and on top of that are these different additives,” he said. “And [the] additives get added in different ways. So depending on the ways that the material is mixed, when you’re making the material, it could be batch or continuously mixed. You can change some of these ratios, and it’s called by some outsiders, anecdotally, pixie dust.”
“It’s not as much science at this point, as it is throwing darts at a wall and seeing what sticks,” he added.