Mashable tells MHProNews.com the future of urban architecture will be the development of sustainable, modular, and immediate construction utilizing a contour crafting machine that can crank out one square foot of a cement compound in 20 seconds. University of Southern California Professor Berokh Khoshnevis, director of the Center for Rapid Automatic Fabrication Technologies (CRAFT), says the contour crafting machine is set up on site, plans are fed into the device, and within one day an efficient, environmentally-friendly building is standing. Present applications could be used for emergency housing, but in the future, as more sophisticated materials are developed, costs of construction will fall due to lower manpower needs, and urban housing will fit into areas not previously thought to be buildable. Khoshnevis says, “We can make the cost of construction so low that we can put money into the materials. The buildings of the future will be stronger.”

(Photo credit: Mashable)