Looking for a house? Then print it!

The idea is simple and yet at the same time brilliant. Do you want a bicycle? Draw one and soon you could be riding around on it. A car? No problem. A house? Here you are. It has been 50 years since the first episode was broadcast of the Enchanted Pencil [Zaczarowany ołówek] cartoon produced by the Łódź-based Semafor studio. But now such fairy tale scenarios seem close to becoming reality. Never before has this form of production been so easy. A while back someone printed out a 3D pistol on a home printer, which they subsequently got arrested for. Doctors have also managed to print out hip replacements. In the US space travel components are being printed out. But in China they’ve even started printing houses. And with some speed, too! Ten houses in 24 hours. Each house has an area of app. 200 sqm, it is a bungalow and costs only USD 5,000. Instead of construction workers and cranes, the building site was filled with four huge industrial printers (11m long and almost 7m tall), which pumped out concrete from a huge pipette that resembled one a giant baker might use for applying the icing to a gargantuan birthday cake. There are plenty of advantages in house printing – not only do you save time and money, but this method of construction is also much safer. According to the International Labour Organisation, at the moment 60,000 people are dying in construction site accidents annually. This could be avoided or at least reduced when the construction process is taken over by these hi-tech machines. Besides, with printers highly elaborate shapes can be created – domes, arches and so on – which are very time consuming and expensive when built using traditional methods. The advantage of printing over constructing is so considerable that NASA is already developing a method of printing space bases on the Moon. Meanwhile, on Earth printers will be building the skyscrapers of the future (performing their tasks attached to the highest floor currently under construction and then moved up a storey when each level is complete). This revolution is just round the corner, and not only in the construction industry, because no-one knows just what new purposes the technology could eventually be put to. In the future you might be able to print anything at home – from shoes for jogging to chocolate. What will happen to traditional shops if this happens? Are the owners and tenants of shopping centres presently quaking with fear at the prospect, as they were when internet retail first hit the scene? The e-commerce storm, however, has since shifted somewhat into the background – but will 3D printers go the same way? According to research company Markets & Markets, the global market for the products, tech and applications in the 3D printer sector is likely to be worth almost USD 230 bln in 2016. Furthermore, such printers are becoming ever more advanced and cheaper. This year a contract was signed between Polish company Zortax of Olsztyn and Dell: the former has ordered 5,000 printers that are most likely to be sold at less than USD 2,000 per item. I have not even mentioned the cheapest models of 3D printers that can now be bought for around PLN 2,000, or the fact that the designs for items for printing are increasingly becoming available free of charge on the internet. And this is only the start of the adventure. As the history of computing has taught us, such technologies evolve at a dizzying rate. What will happen when these printers become widely available on a mass scale? Will retail have to make way for or adapt itself to this new form, where instead of traditional products people will be trading in printer ‘ink’? Such simple materials that do not need much handling are far better suited to online sales. In this way e-commerce could gain a crucial ally in the guise of 3D printers. We have yet to see whether this alliance will shake the foundations of retail as we now know it. But, as usual, only warehouse developers will remain unscathed, since logistics will be necessary however things turn out. Whatever shape the future takes, the brave new 3D printing world is inevitable. The only question is, when can I get my hands on one of these enchanted pencils?