A 52-home community starting is now being 3D-printed in Kenya — take a look around Mvule Gardens

Over the next year-and-a-half, a coastal city in Kenya will become home to a sprawling affordable housing community built using what could be the future of construction: 3D printers.

Construction-tech company 14Trees has deployed a 3D printer in its Kilifi, Kenya Mvule Gardens development to create the walls of the community's 52 homes.

And demand is already high for this unfinished project — its first phase of 10 homes has already been sold despite being incomplete.

"When people visited, they were truly impressed and they wanted to buy the houses," Francois Perrot, the managing director at 14Trees, told Insider. "We have many people ... who are interested in acquiring these houses."

Perrot founded 14Trees in 2016 as a joint venture between Holcim — a building materials manufacturer— and the UK government's British International Investment.

Since the start, the company's goal has been to create affordable, sustainable, and necessary buildings like homes and schools throughout Africa.

Source: 14Trees

But it wasn't always working with 3D printers. For the first four years, 14Trees was building with "green" soil-stabilized bricks.

In 2020, the company made the switch to 3D printers, which Perrot says is the only tech that could build the number of schools and houses needed in Africa.

Source: 14Trees

“If we truly wanted to have a massive impact on the school and housing backlog, we needed to change the way we build more disruptively,” he said. “That’s when we came to the conclusion that the only technology which would do that is 3D printing.”

When the development is finished, Mvule Gardens will sprawl across over 124,320 square-feet of land near the coastline.

These two to three-bedroom homes are being built for the working middle class.

Mvule Garden's over 600-square-foot two-bedroom homes start at a little over $27,660 …

Source: Mvule Gardens

… while its nearly 820-square-foot three-bedroom units start at about $37,800.

"It's really not luxurious," Perrot said of the homes. "It's good quality, sustainable, affordable houses."

All of Mvule Garden's two and three-bedroom homes will have amenities like backyards, modern kitchens, front porches, and open floor plans.

These houses will be built in five phases over the next roughly 18 months, although Perrot notes 14Trees isn't in a rush to wrap this up.

"The most important thing is that every phase is an opportunity to [try] something that increases affordability and sustainability," he said. "Time is not that much of an issue. What matters is that we deliver on our mission."

It takes a total of 18 hours spread out over a few days to build the walls of each two-bedroom home.

Source: Holcim

An additional 10 hours is then needed to print the three-bedroom units.

The walls of the first phase's 10 homes were built from October to January with several breaks in-between.

On average, 14Trees spent one week building each house.

The team is now putting the finishing touches on the first 10 properties.

And once they're roofed and completed by May, its first tenants — employees at a nearby sister company— will move in later this year.

To complete this development 14Trees is using one of COBOD's popular 3D printers previously used by nonprofit Thinking Huts to construct a school in Madagascar in 2022.

Source: Insider

The printer then excretes Holcim's proprietary concrete "ink," TectorPrint.

Every new building phase will feature new improvements — whether it be in the design, printing options, or "ink" — aimed at improving the sustainability and affordability of the homes.

By the end of the project, 14Trees' goal is to reduce the cost of building a home by 20% compared to traditional home building techniques in Kenya

Right now, the cost is equivalent.

A 52-home community is undoubtedly a large undertaking.

But at this moment, it's not the largest 3D printing home project happening in the world.

Instead, that title goes to home construction Lennar and 3D printing construction startup Icon's 100-home community that's now being built just north of Austin, Texas.

Source: Insider

But with a starting price in the mid-$400,000s, these homes are definitely more expensive than Mvule Garden's community.