23-year-old Maggie Grout teamed up with an architect to found an organization that uses 3D printers to create school campuses in Madagascar. The products, which she calls Thinking Huts, cost $40,000 and take about 18 hours to build. The huts are produced in a honeycomb shape so that additional modules can be easily added if need be. Poverty, violence, and lack of infrastructure make it difficult for large-scale development projects to succeed in rural Madagascar. Grout sent a 3D printer in a shipping container to Madagascar, where she got to work creating schools in these rural towns. Grout uses locals to assist her in the building process as much as possible and hopes the schools can become hubs for educational and economic growth in these underdeveloped regions.
Image via Geoffrey Gaspard
Read other stories from the 6/19/23 newsletter: