ICON is 3D Printing Homes for the Homeless in Austin

ICON, a high-profile Austin startup that has developed industrial scale 3D printers, is taking on its biggest project yet -- and it's one that's poised to help the greater Austin community.

The company has 3D printed a 500-square-foot welcome center for the Community First! Village, a community developed by nonprofit Mobile Loaves & Fishes to provide permanent housing for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness. The community is entering its second phase and will grow to 51 acres and be home to 480 formerly homeless people in the Austin area.

Six new ICON homes, commissioned by Cielo Property Group, with varied designs are also in the works. The company plans to simultaneously print the new homes to increase speed and lower costs, a move that will likely also serve as a demonstration of how the company could scale. ICON previously 3D printed a home that met local building codes in Austin and unveiled it at SXSW last year. But, if successful, the Community First! project would appear to be the first 3D printed residential homes in the U.S.

ICON co-founder and CEO Jason Ballard commended the Community First! team on the project and their years of work in the Austin community.

“Their non-stop work to love and serve our sisters and brothers experiencing homelessness is inspiring and makes all of us at ICON want to bring the very best of ourselves to the job. All the late nights, blood, sweat and tears at the lab … this is what it’s for," he said in a news release. "We’re proud to deliver buildings like this to Community First!, and I think all of Austin can be proud that two local, home-grown ventures are working on these issues together in such an innovative way. I hope this makes Austin proud too.”

ICON, which is one of Austin Inno's 50 on Fire companies this year, is now on its second generation of 3D printers -- the latest is called Vulcan II. The large machines use robotics, automated material handling, advanced software and a proprietary concrete called Lavacrete to make the homes as efficiently and effectively as possible.

“Community First! Village is the perfect place on the planet to experiment with this approach," Alan Graham, founder and CEO of Mobile Loaves & Fishes, said in a statement. "One of our desires is that this partnership with ICON will grow so deep that we’re able to leverage this technology to someday build all of our micro-homes in future phases of the Village."

ICON has also been working with nonprofit New Story on residential projects in Latin America.

The company was founded in 2016 by Ballard, who previously founded TreeHouse; Vesta Printers co-founder Alex Le Roux; and Evan Loomis, also a TreeHouse co-founder. Last year, it raised $9 million in seed funding led by Oakhouse Partners, an early-stage investment firm in San Francisco. Its other investors include D.R. Horton, which is one of the nation’s most active homebuilders; Emaar, which was a developer on the Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates; Capital Factory, CAZ Investments, Cielo Property Group, Engage Ventues, MicroVentures, Saturn Five, Shadow Ventures, Trust Ventures, Verbene Road Holdings and Vulcan Capital, an investment firm founded by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen.