There’s a housing crisis going on around the globe. Populations are on the rise and city centers just can’t meet the ever-growing demand. By 2050, the United Nations projects that there will be 9.2 billion humans on Earth. We’re gonna need to house those 2.2 billion new residents, and an industrial engineering professor from USC thinks he’s figured out how.

3D printing has grown from a fascinating novelty to the means by which dreamers will usher in the future. One such dreamer is professor Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of Southern California who has developed a massive 3D printer that, he says, can “print” an entire house over the course of a mere 24 hours. With the invention comes the collective melancholy of all those who work in construction.