Austin startup ICON unveiled a new method of mass producing small homes with a massive 3D printer in a process that the company says takes just 12 to 24 hours. At the annual film and innovation festival known as SXSW, the company showed off how it could construct a 650-square-foot house out of cement in one day.
Partnering with housing solutions nonprofit New Story, the Texas builders are hoping to achieve their vision of creating sustainable, “quality homes accessible to everyone.” ICON isn’t just focused on building homes fast, but is aiming to make them extremely affordable as well.
Using an industrial sized Vulcan printer, ICON says it can currently build their single-story home for $10,000 but is working to drop that cost to just $4,000. “It’s much cheaper than the typical American home,” ICON co-founder Jason Ballard told The Verge. In comparison, some Americans have chosen to downsize into “tiny homes” which can cost nearly $40,000 and are only between 200 and 400-square-feet in size.
“(ICON) believes, as do I, that 3D printing is going to be a method for all kinds of housing,” New Story co-founder Alexandria Lafci added. The presentation at SXSW comes after a report from the World Resources Institute estimated that 1.2 billion people live in cities without affordable or secure housing.
They’d be considerably more resistant to tornados and fires.
David Wright
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Tyler Watson
The homes will be so cheap that it will help stamp out homelessness. The big problem is that many homeless people are homeless due to terrible life decisions like petty crime and drug abuse. So even if you make a small town with a few hundred super cheap printed homes you still have the issue of it being a dangerous slum due to the sorts of people that will live there. Now if they could make cheap 3D printed prisons/rehab centers then at least they'd be a benefit to society.
Joshua Nelson
I doubt they will be expensive, if a developed has prime location land to build on he's not going to stick plastic houses on it. 3D printed homes will be put in areas where the land is virtually worthless.
Gabriel Parker
Did you even read? Unless there's some plastic cement I've never heard of before.
Noah Evans
quonset huts are cheaper, more efficient, more durable. and dont require a massive 3d printer.
Brandon Gonzalez
Insulation for those are very expensive, thermal and humidity-based, compared to the density of a cement construction Not to say that, depending on the angle and height of the rooms, you get the cheap side too with cement
Ryan Powell
Fucking up the price of housing so people need to be in debt their whole lives was deliberate, no question in my mind that many attempts will be made to shut this operation down.
