每日跟讀#555: Future House: 3-D Printed and Ready to Fly

Homes you can print, transport on the back of a truck, even fly. Although they sound like the homes of science fiction, they might well be the real residences of the not-too-distant future.

Impelled by the pressures of climate change and population growth and shaped by the promise of technologies like 3-D printing, a revolution is brewing in the future of homebuilding around the globe — especially in cities.

房屋可以列印，裝在卡車後方運送，甚至還能空運。這些房屋聽來雖像是科幻小說中的家園，卻大有可能在不太遙遠的未來成為真正的住宅。

受到氣候變遷和人口增長壓力的驅使，加上如3-D列印等科技大有可為的發展，全球未來房屋的建築正在醞釀一場革命，尤其是在城市中。

As Earth's inhabitants, we need to rethink almost everything about the way we live, especially in coastal cities, because our world may be reshaped by rising oceans in ways we can't yet fully anticipate, according to Hans-Peter Plag, a professor and director of the Mitigation and Adaptation Research Institute at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

"We have built with the design principle that sea level is not going to change," he said. "This time has come to an end. On the other hand, living in the coastal zone is extremely important for us. So we need to find a way to live in the coastal zone, but we cannot assume that sea level is stable."

根據維吉尼亞州諾福克市老道明大學「調節和適應研究所」教授兼所長漢斯─彼得．普拉格的說法，身為地球居民，我們幾乎對人類生活方式的每一方面都須重新思考，特別是在沿海城市，因為我們的世界可能因海平面上升而重塑，且結果迄今仍難以完全預測。

他說：「我們之前建造房屋的設計原則，是海平面不會有所改變。 這個年代即將過去。另一方面，生活在沿海地帶對我們而言又非常重要。因此，我們需要找到在沿海地區居住的方法，但不能再假設海平面會穩定不變。」

Complicating the problem of a shrinking landmass is the prediction that the human population will grow to almost 10 billion people by 2050. And while many cities in the world will have to cope with extraordinary growth, others will have to prepare for shifting migration patterns that could leave them virtually deserted.

Today, 1 in 8 people live in urban slums, and by 2025, "it is likely that 1.6 billion will require adequate, affordable housing," according to the UN-Habitat's World Cities Report 2016.

讓陸塊縮減問題變得更棘手的是，預估到2050年時世界人口將成長到近100億人。雖然世上有許多城市將必須設法應付異常的人口增長，卻也另有些城市不得不為轉變中的人口遷移模式預作準備，這些城市最後可能淪為空城。

根據聯合國人居署發表的2016年世界城市狀況報告，現今有八分之一的人居住在城市的貧民窟，到2025年時「可能有16億人需要適切且可負擔得起的住宅」。

Behrokh Khoshnevis, professor of engineering at the University of Southern California and director of its Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies (CRAFT), is one of many innovators looking to ease the housing crises of the future. "Somehow, we have to address the issue of shelter, which is at the base of the pyramid of needs," Khoshnevis said.

He hopes his 3-D printing construction method, which he calls Contour Crafting, will create a way to build homes for a fraction of the current cost. While he can't do anything about the price of land, Khoshnevis said his technology would build a house in a day and cut down on the construction cost by 30 percent.

貝羅．柯什內維斯是南加大工程學教授兼「快速自動製造技術中心」主任，也是尋求緩解未來住屋危機的許多創新者之一。柯什內維斯說：「無論如何，我們必須解決住屋問題，它在需求金字塔的最底層。」

他把他的3-D列印施工方法稱為「輪廓製作」法，希望透過這種方法可以現今成本的一小部分建造房屋。雖然柯什內維斯對降低土地價格無能為力，他卻表示他的技術可在一天內建成一所房屋，且將會建造成本削減30％。

Source article: https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0067/301455/web/