Resembling a futuristic hunting cabin of sorts (SOM really plays up the off-grid wilderness scenarios in its renderings), the AMIE abode, with its ribbed aerodynamic profile and rooftop photovoltaics, also wouldn’t look out of place amongst some of the more avant-garde entries at the Department of Energy’s U.S. Solar Decathlon. Assembled by Tennessee-headquartered manufactured home heavyweight Clayton Homes, the single-room structure stands as a super-efficient showcase of an innovative, zero-waste 3-D printed panel system that integrates structure, insulation and exterior cladding along with air and moisture barriers.
As noted by SOM, assembling homes, solar-powered or not, using 3-D printing technology is a quicker, cheaper, more efficient and dramatically lower waste affair compared to conventional homebuilding. Entire structures, much like the one printed for the AMIE research demonstration, could even potentially be fully recycled — or “ground up,” as SOM puts it — and reprinted for other uses.