ICON Technology's 3-D printed home, the first designed in the United States specifically for construction with a 3-D printer using concrete. The home was unveiled at the SSXW Interactive Technology Conference in Austin, Texas on March 11. The building was designed by San Antonio architecture firm Lake Flato.
ICON Technology's 3-D printed home, the first designed in the United States specifically for construction with a 3-D printer using concrete. The home was unveiled at the SSXW Interactive Technology Conference in Austin, Texas on March 11. The building was designed by San Antonio architecture firm Lake Flato.
ICON Technology's 3-D printed home, the first designed in the United States specifically for construction with a 3-D printer using concrete. The home was unveiled at the SSXW Interactive Technology Conference in Austin, Texas on March 11. The building was designed by San Antonio architecture firm Lake Flato.
ICON Technology's 3-D printed home, the first designed in the United States specifically for construction with a 3-D printer using concrete. The home was unveiled at the SSXW Interactive Technology Conference in Austin, Texas on March 11. The building was designed by San Antonio architecture firm Lake Flato.
ICON Technology's 3-D printed home, the first designed in the United States specifically for construction with a 3-D printer using concrete. The home was unveiled at the SSXW Interactive Technology Conference in Austin, Texas on March 11. The building was designed by San Antonio architecture firm Lake Flato.
ICON Technology's 3-D printed home, the first designed in the United States specifically for construction with a 3-D printer using concrete. The home was unveiled at the SSXW Interactive Technology Conference in Austin, Texas on March 11. The building was designed by San Antonio architecture firm Lake Flato.
ICON, an Austin company that develops advanced construction technologies, is building a 1,700-square-foot habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston that will be used in a year-long simulated Mars mission. Pictured is Vulcan, the company's large-scale construction 3D printer, extruding ICON's proprietary Lavacrete.
The Mars Dune Alpha habitat is shown under construction at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The 3D-printed habitat is being built by ICON, an Austin company that develops advanced construction technologies, and will be used in a one-year simulated Mars mission.
Hurricanes taught Jason Ballard that conventional U.S. homes are fatally fragile when he was a child growing up in the Gulf Coast town of Orange, near the Louisiana border.
Classes in conservation at Texas A&M taught Ballard that building construction produces more landfill debris, consumes more water and wastes more energy than any other industry.
At the SXSW technology conference in Austin, Ballard taught visitors how a home designed to be 3-D printed can resist what climate change can throw at it, minimize waste and inefficiency, and still look good.
TOMLINSON’S TAKE: Cheating Texas construction companies place $1.9 billion burden on taxpayers
“I looked at everything: zip panels, shipping container houses, prefab houses, modular houses, probably the weirdest thing I looked at was architectural fungus, where you would, like, grow a house,” he told me. “When I got to 3-D printing and robotic construction more broadly, it was the only thing that worked on the spreadsheet of affordability, scalability, sustainability, beauty and dignity.”
Ballard, founder and CEO of ICON Technology Inc., decided to scale up the desktop 3-D printers that made toys from plastic a decade ago. He’s built a device 15.5 feet high and 46.5 feet wide capable of laying down two-inch-thick layers of concrete to construct a 3,000 square foot building.
His company has completed dozens of buildings, ranging from small homes to military barracks to a dwelling used by NASA to test the feasibility of living on Mars. But the home unveiled in Austin is the first structure explicitly designed to take full advantage of robotic construction.
“Robotically built houses, 3-D printed houses want to be very different,” Ballard said. “If you just carbon copy or sort of appropriate the architectural forms and designs of contemporary houses, you end up appropriating a lot of their problems as well.”
ICON teamed up with San Antonio architecture firm Lake Flato, known for innovative designs that maximize the potential of locally-sourced building materials and react to the local climate. Lewis McNeel, an associated partner, said the firm wanted to highlight the unique appearance of the printed concrete.
“The high-level thinking about the house was not just to showcase printed concrete, but how to show that it can help you produce the most appealing, friendly house you can imagine, and a house that works for long term living,” he said.
The house looks like no other, and the unique feature besides the gray, layered concrete walls are the graceful curves that replace straight edges. They contrast with the linear doors, windows and structural beams of blonde wood.
The printer lays down two sets of walls, one exterior and one interior with insulation in between, to meet building standards, but the technique makes the walls feel more substantial. While the printing pattern is apparent in most interiors, bathrooms and other areas are plastered or tiled the same as a traditional home.
In standard construction, having a curved corner or wavy wall requires highly-skilled framers and drywall crews and can add considerable costs. The 3D printer doesn’t care if it’s a straight and sharp wall or a perfect circle; the cost and construction time are the same.
“If you wanted a house that was a perfect square, we could print you a perfect square,” Ballard said. If your want a Fibonacci Spiral, we can print you a house in a Fibonacci Spiral.”
ICON Technology is privately held and in start-up mode. Ballard raised an additional $185 million in a funding round led by Tiger Global Management last month, which was on top of $207 million raised in August, the website TechCrunch reported.
Ballard said the company is building 12 more printers in Austin this quarter and plans to ramp up production. The company recently struck a deal with homebuilding giant Lennar to develop an Austin-area neighborhood of 100 homes, all printed by machines on rails.
TOMLINSON’S TAKE: Texas Triangle is key to economic growth, but brings big changes
He said each print costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it’s already profitable to use them, and he hopes to bring production costs down.
I asked Ballard about the potential negative impact on the climate of building so many homes from concrete, which is a significant source of carbon dioxide emissions. But he insisted that concrete remains one of the best building materials available, and long-lasting resilient structures are better for the planet long term.
Later this year, Ballard said he plans to build his first five homes along the Gulf Coast to withstand a Category 5 hurricane. He thinks robotic construction will solve a lot of problems.
“My childhood home is gone; my family has spent Christmas in a FEMA trailer,” Ballard said. “So, this one feels personal. We have to get outta that doom loop on the coast.”
Chris Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and politics.
- Here's how Houston plans to attract new corporate headquarters post-pandemic
- Huntsman wins power battle with activist investor Starboard
- Candemic: How COVID upended beer packaging for local breweries
- Another jump in mortgage rates sparks affordability concerns for homebuyers
Chris Tomlinson has written commentary on business, energy and economics for the Houston Chronicle since 2014. He's the author of two New York Times Bestsellers, "Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth" and "Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families Who Share the Tomlinson Name - One White, One Black." Before joining the Chronicle, he spent 20 years with The Associated Press reporting on politics, economics, conflicts and natural disasters from more than 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
Female officers are at the forefront of the fight against crime and the move toward community policing efforts. The Houston Chronicle is profiling five female leaders who rarely get the spotlight, as they tend to be...