France Printed This Apartment Building Layer by Layer and Finished It Three Months Early

Plurial Novilia handed over ViliaSprint² in Bezannes, France, after crews completed the full structure in noticeably less time than a matching conventional building right next door. The project delivers 12 social housing apartments across three floors and 800 square meters of living space. Each unit opens onto its own timber balcony. A gently curved outer wall and rounded floor plan give the building its shape without the usual extra cost that custom molds would demand on a standard job.

PERI 3D Construction used a single large printer from COBOD. This machine sits on a movable platform that allows you to move it across the site as needed. It receives a unique mix of concrete from Holcim and simply squirts it out through a nozzle, layer by layer, to complete every wall and partition in one go. For the majority of the project, three operators ran the show. The programming instructed the machine on where to go and how much material to lay down in each pass, allowing it to handle curved bits as easily as straight sections.

The actual printing took only 34 days, and they finished well ahead of schedule, as the aim was 50 days. Even with the time it needed to complete the rest of the building inside, they were finished in around three months. Now, a very comparable building built the old fashioned way on the exact same plot took around six months to get its framework up and they needed twice as many people on the crew. So, in the end, the project was completed three months faster than a typical technique.

The concrete brought to the site is already mixed, saving on truck deliveries and the emissions associated with those extra travels. Because the printer follows an optimum path and does not waste materials by creating temporary molds, the specific design of this building required around 10% less material than a more boxy design. The blend even contains synthetic fibers to provide strength, and Holcim’s formula for this specific mix has managed to reduce carbon production by approximately 30% when compared to a standard mix. Later, the crew put more perlite insulation and finished the interior. On top of that, there are solar panels spanning 500 square meters of roof area, working with a hybrid gas and heat-pump system to try to get the place to approximately 60% energy self-sufficiency while still fulfilling all of France’s existing emission criteria for new residences.

People are currently living in these apartments, which are essentially simple design with all of the practical advantages of having stuff supplied faster. Now the same technology is being used for even larger jobs, as Plurial Novilia is already planning a follow-up project with 40 apartments that will use two printers at the same time, cutting down even more time.
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