Set to take shape in Latin America, the cluster of homes is designed for families living on less than US$200 a month, and will ideally serve as proof of concept for low-cost housing solutions around the world.

The project is a joint initiative from non-profit New Story, Yves Béhar's design firm Fuseproject and construction technology company Icon to provide housing solutions for the homeless. At the SXSW festival in Texas last year, the team revealed an impressive example of how this vision might take shape, showing off a full-sized proof of concept model of a 350 sq ft (32 sq m) home.

The use of 3D printing in architecture has taken significant steps forward of late. We've seen the technology put to use to construct offices, a castle and even 10 houses in 24 hours by one particularly ambitious Chinese firm. While there will be variations in how it is tuned to these different projects, generally speaking, large 3D printers for construction extrude a mortar through the nozzle in programmed patterns, layer by layer, until the basic structure of the building is formed.