Principal Investigator David Hardt
Project Website https://sites.mit.edu/mithaus/
The UN estimates that up to 3 billion people will require new shelter by 2050. Given the simultaneous demand for higher standards of living across all countries, and the necessity for robust infrastructure to promote a variety of other industries, it is becoming increasingly important to execute construction projects better, cheaper, and faster. However, construction significantly contributes to global carbon emissions, material waste, water consumption and deforestation. Concurrently, the increasing use of plastics with low recycling rates has caused rapid accumulation of plastic waste since 1950.
The MIT HAUS group, led by Prof. David Hardt and Dr. AJ Perez, is researching and pioneering solutions to address each of these problems. MIT HAUS has a mission to provide affordable, sustainable structures for the built world. Its flagship application being to build low-cost, dignified homes using large-scale additive manufacturing (LSAM) with recycled composites. LSAM promotes high-throughput, consistent-quality construction, and composite manufacturing from recycled polymers addresses both sustainability and reduction in existing waste worldwide.