World’s First 3D Printed Community Starts Development in California

Palari Group and Mighty Buildings have announced what could become the world’s first community of 3D printed homes. The community, which is slated to be zero net energy, will be built in Ranchero Mirage, California.

Palari Group is a development company dedicated to building sustainability, and Mighty Buildings is a construction tech startup that uses 3D printing and robotic automation to make building “kits”. Together, they’ve bought a five-acre site in California, which they plan to develop into a community of 15 eco-friendly homes. When it’s finished, it will be a $15 million development, and the world’s first planned community of 3D printed homes.

The foundation of this development is Mighty Buildings’ panelized Mighty Kit system. The system uses 3D printed polymer composite panels, which are prefabricated and shipped from Oakland. Each of the panels comes assembled, with structure, insulation, finishing and weatherproofing. The outside is a “stone like” material combined with steel, and the company website touts the “high thermal resistance” of the panel.

A sample panel from Might Buildings’ website, used in their panelized construction kits (Image Via Mighty Buildings).

For this development, the partners will be using their “Cinco” housing unit, a single family home measuring 1,440 square feet. The panelized system allows for customized floor plans, but all of the Cinco kits have a fully-equipped kitchen, bathroom, and garage.

Both Palari and Mighty Buildings have focused on the environmental aspect of the development. The development team will hook the homes up to photovoltaic panels from Tesla Solar and Powerwall, and set up the garages to allow for an electric car. But the main environmental draw is the building process itself; Mighty Buildings emphasizes that the 3D printing process eliminates construction waste, and that they are using weather-resistant materials to eliminate waste down the line. Rancho Mirage is well-known for both wealth and sustainability initiatives, and the press release bills the development as selling “smart and healthy homes to sustainability-minded buyers.”

The Cinco, a 3D printed single-family housing kit, will be used as the basis for the new development (Image via Mighty Buildings).

The Ranchero Mirage development comes out at a pivotal time for 3D printed construction in the US. The country’s first 3D printed house on the market, a multimillion-dollar Long Island property by New York’s SQ4D Inc, was listed in January. 2021 also saw Florida’s first 3D printed building. And, while housing experts have doused the idea that 3D printed construction will solve the housing crisis or other social ills like global warming, industry players still have high hopes for what their tech can do.

“We could not be more excited for this groundbreaking collaboration with Palari, and to be a part of the creation of the world’s first 3D-printed zero net energy community,” said Alexey Dubov, Co-Founder and COO of Mighty Buildings. “This will be the first on-the-ground actualization of our vision for the future of housing – able to be deployed rapidly, affordably, sustainably, and able to augment surrounding communities with a positive dynamic.”