Inside a New Community of 3D Printed Homes in Texas

ICON, the company that has received almost $60 million and commissioned NASA to create homes and habitats on the Moon and Mars, is using the same 3D technology to build one-story residential buildings in a carefully planned area in the Texas Hill Country. with a price starting in the middle of $400,000.

Reservations for 100 homes will begin shortly, with first occupancy expected later this year.

Seven robotic ICON 3D printers are currently extruding wall material for houses near Austin, Texas, which were designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and are being developed by Lennar, one of the country’s largest home builders.

BIG is often involved in cutting-edge architecture, such as its sail-like rental apartment building for Durst at Via 57 West in New York City, as well as designing NASA habitats on the Moon and Mars.

The Texas homes are located on Wolf Ranch, a community designed by Perot Hillwood Communities.

Located near the San Gabriel River, just west of I-35 in suburban Georgetown, large tracts of Wolf Ranch are already filled with couples and children in homes built by a range of nationwide developers, including Coventry, Dries, Highland and Perry, as well as another neighborhood built by Lennar.

Georgetown, for its part, is a charming historic city of over 75,000 people, where Friday Night Lights and Dazed and Confused were filmed, and now runs on 100% renewable energy. Those who live here agree with his management – one local brewery uses 100% wind power for its beer.

The site where Lennar and ICON are busy printing and finishing houses is on the east side of Wolf Ranch Parkway, in an area known as South Fork.

Nearby, Hillwood is building an additional clubhouse and swimming pool, and the original community center, The Den, is in the Hilltop area to the north. The Comprehensive Homeowners Association is responsible for fees, which include amenities and alarm monitoring.

Not only will the Lennar ranch-style single-family homes feature thick 3D printed walls, they’ll also feature a Sunnova solar system.

Prices for all Wolf Ranch homes typically range from $370,000 to $1 million, though some price tags were slashed last fall as interest rates rose to fight sluggish inflation.

But the faster, cheaper construction promised by 3D robotics – walls can be erected in days – and the ability to add heavy and difficult-to-transport water on site have attracted supporters and investors who also see it as an ideal affordable solution. home building solution.

Announcing their 3D home project last fall, Lennar Executive Chairman Stuart Miller said, “We are thrilled to partner with ICON and BIG in building a first-of-its-kind printable home community that combines innovative design with sustainable features at an affordable price. With the housing shortage that persists across the country, it’s more important than ever to innovate to find new construction methods that provide greater design flexibility and increased production at affordable prices.”

ICON is currently valued at over $2 billion and uses its own Vulcan 3D printer and a proprietary concrete formulation dubbed Lavacrete.

Just like your personal printer’s cartridges move back and forth on a rail, spraying ink, the Vulcan’s nozzle travels on a long, customizable rail attached to its giant portals – at the Wolf Ranch it’s 38 feet across and creates walls 10 feet high – when extrusion. a toothpaste-like column of continuous gray spaghetti, each row of Lavacrete stacked on top of the previous one.

The concrete mixture is kneaded in the attached Magma machine. But in order for Lavacrete to harden at a certain rate — so that it can support the next layer but not collapse — it needs to be changed depending on the weather and adjusted on the fly at the construction site.

The extremely durable material, which ICON claims exceeds strength requirements by 350%, has been designed to withstand extreme weather conditions – Texas experiences ice storms and hurricanes – and is resistant to water, mold, termites and fire. His homes have already survived 250 mph winds and a 7.4 earthquake in Mexico.

While the “regular” dull gray color of concrete doesn’t always look cosmetically appealing, the powder can be altered to appear lighter and whiter. All homes at Wolf Ranch will have white interiors and grayscale exteriors.

While some critics say the hardest part of 3D building is getting the windows and doors to fit correctly, Lennar’s sales executives, BIG architects and ICON experts have collaborated on smoother installation solutions for Wolf Ranch.

Lennar prepares the site and pours the concrete slab foundation so ICON can print the walls and cut out places for the plumbing and electrical boxes. The other Lennar craftsmen then return and install all the mechanisms and the roof, which is then topped with solar panels.

Although it’s easy to imagine that 3D printed houses would resemble the “little boxes” suggested in Pete Seeger’s ode to patterned houses, with the refrain: “And they’re all made of glued timber / And they all look the same.” “That won’t happen at the Wolf Ranch.

That’s because the new homes can be customized with eight different plans and 24 three- or four-bedroom, two- or three-bath configurations, and will range from 1,574 to 2,112 square feet.

ICON also prints kitchen islands and garden pots, and some homes will also print chests of drawers.

Lennar, which funded the ICON Series B funding round through its LenX division last fall, will also include a Connected Home package consisting of the Ring Video Doorbell Pro doorbell, Schlage Encode Smart WiFi deadbolt, and Honeywell Home T6 Pro WiFi smart thermostat. .

“For the first time in world history, we are seeing a fleet of robots build an entire community of homes. And not just homes, homes that are better in every way…better design, higher durability, higher energy performance and comfort, and increased sustainability,” ICON co-founder Jason Ballard said last fall. “I believe that in the future, robots and drones will build entire districts, towns and cities, and we will remember Lennar as a wolf ranch, as the place where large-scale robotic construction began. We still have a long way to go, but I believe this marks a very exciting and encouraging turn in how we address the world’s housing challenges.”