A Critical Integrative Assessment of 3D Concrete Printing for New Zealand Housing

Three-dimensional concrete printing (3DCP) is an emerging additive manufacturing technology that has attracted significant international interest as a potential alternative to conventional construction methods. Existing research has largely focused on isolated technical domains, resulting in fragmented assessments of the technology and inconsistencies between the construction systems evaluated. This review addresses that gap through a holistic review from technical, architectural, environmental, and economic perspectives, with particular emphasis on its applicability within the New Zealand context. The review found that the multifunctional benefits of 3DCP often cause interdependencies between performance domains, which creates evaluation challenges for individual discipline assessments. Several key barriers to adoption within New Zealand were identified, such as limited evidence of the seismic performance of 3DCP structures, a lack of specific regulatory acceptance pathways, and economic scalability. Nevertheless, 3DCP construction was found to demonstrate suitable technical performance to comply with the New Zealand Building Code (NZBC), though this often involved supplementary construction that failed to fully capitalise on the benefits of 3DCP. Economic, regulatory, and social pressures may be driving re-standardisation in built residential projects, reducing the technology’s architectural differentiation from conventional construction and relinquishing one of the technology’s principal value propositions. Life-cycle assessments suggest environmental performance may be comparable with conventional light timber framing (LTF) where low-carbon strategies are adopted, though this should be re-evaluated as seismically resilient wall typologies are developed. Economic viability remains strongly dependent on deployment scale, with breakeven occurring at approximately eleven dwellings, suggesting the technology will be best suited for large-scale developments and prefabrication facilities.