IIT Madras alumni startup, Tvasta Manufacturing Solutions built India’s first 3D printed house. The house was inaugurated by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on April 27 at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras campus.
The startup is part of the new incubator of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) established at IIT Madras. This Bangalore based startup also happens to be the first of its kind after claiming to have developed the country’s first 3D Printing Construction Technology back in 2018. According to reports, the team had planned to take this technology to the mass market soon. Adithya VS, co-founder of Tvasta had said in a 2018 interview that they would be building India’s first 3D printed house within the next year. Well, they did in fact achieve the first half of their goal.
The recently constructed 3D house has a bedroom, a hall, and a kitchen and spreads upto 600 square feet. The single-storey 3D structure has been constructed using indigenous concrete 3D printing technology and software. The house was constructed in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter, the institute said.
This technology is one of the advanced ones out there which can build a new house in five days maximum. The cost of the house is reduced by 30% and the life of the building can exceed by 50 years through this technology.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman congratulated the institution and praised them for their efforts to bring to life such innovative and new concepts and ideas to real life. “India definitely needs such solutions which do not require much time. This technology enables building a 3D printed house in 5 days. With the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s goal of ‘Housing for All by 2022,’ we have a huge challenge before us. A huge challenge of meeting that deadline and making sure that people who need houses get it at an affordable price. The Government incentives for that are available,” the minister said.
She added, “The presentation made earlier by Tvasta tells me everything is Atma Nirbhar. From the idea till the furnished house, even the design is all from India. India needs more of this… Conventional housing requires timing, material, logistics, transporting of material, and so on. But if this technology can produce houses in different locales at five days per house, it would not be a big challenge to build 100 million houses by 2022.”
IIT-Madras director Bhaskar Ramamurthi said, “The machine for constructing this house can be rented, like borewells rented by farmers. It provides for large scale, high quality and also, price assurance for the customers.”
The technology used by Tvasta is an automated manufacturing method. For this, a concrete 3D printer that accepts a computerized three-dimensional design file is used. The printer then fabricates a 3D structure layer-by-layer. Besides constructing houses, the technology can be used to solve problems like disaster-time rehabilitation, construction of military bunkers and more.
Proper usage of this technology will be able to help remove the significant housing gap between India and the other countries of the world.