Europe's first fully 3D-printed house got its first inhabitants on April 29. A Dutch couple moved into the printed two-bedroom bungalow located in the Eindhoven suburb of Bosrijk.
Two retired shopkeepers from Amsterdam, Elize Lutz, 70, and Harrie Dekkers, 67, received the key to the app that allows them to open the front door on April 29, The Guardian reported.
Built by construction firm Saint-Gobain Weber Beamix, the house is inspired by the shape of a boulder. The property is the first of five homes planned by the company, the report said.
"It has the feel of a bunker – it feels safe," Dekkers told the publication.
Lutz and Dekkers are paying €800 (approx Rs 71,667) a month to live in the property for six months from 1 August.
The house consists of 24 concrete elements that were printed layer by layer at a plant in Eindhoven.
While multiple properties have been partly constructed using a 3D printer in France and the US, the makers of the Dutch house and those behind the Dutch house have pipped their rivals by building the first commercially rented property made using a 3D printer nozzle.
“This is also the first one which is 100 percent permitted by the local authorities and which is habited by people who actually pay for living in this house,” said Bas Huysmans, chief executive of Weber Benelux, a construction offshoot of its French parent company Saint-Gobain, as per the report.
Huysmans said the house, which has 94sq meters of living space, was printed in just 120 hours.
"If we would have printed all elements in one go, it would have taken us less than five days. The big benefit is that the printer does not need to eat, does not need to sleep, it doesn’t need to rest. So if we would start tomorrow, and learned how to do it, we can print the next house five days from now," he said.
