Austin startup Icon Technology Inc. is debuting a striking home in East Austin that it constructed in a first-of-its kind collaboration between its large-scale 3D printer and human architects and builders.
The newly built — or should we say printed — home features a variety of curved walls that blend into high-end fir wood. It's something of a new age model property that shows how 3D printing can allow for more creative architectural decisions while keeping costs significantly lower than what they'd be with old school building methods.
"This is all just a deposit on the future," Icon co-founder and CEO Jason Ballard said as he walked through the home at 1700 Riverview St. "I truly think in the future that entire streets and neighborhoods and communities will be built by robots. And I think that future will be faster, more affordable and with a lot, as you see here, more design freedom."
Icon developed the property, which it calls "House Zero," with Lake Flato Architects, a San Antonio-based firm that was one of several to propose hybrid home designs. The 2,000-square-foot, three-bed, 2.5-bath home will be showcased at South by Southwest on March 13 and 14, as will the 350-square-foot accessory dwelling unit that sits next to it.
Together, the home and its guest house took eight days of 3D printing to complete. Then, human builders added interior and exterior additions, including smart home components and landscaping.
Icon's "House Zero" in East Austin
For Icon, one of Austin's best-known and fastest-growing startups, the luxury home represents a new chapter in its development. The company has largely made a name for itself by being the first to develop a habitable 3D-printed home and by using its technology to mostly build small homes for people with very low incomes or those who are experiencing homelessness. It went on to build homes for people in need in Austin and Mexico, as well as projects with NASA.
While the company keeps affordable housing as a primary mission, it's also scaling up to work on higher-end residential real estate projects, as well. Ballard said Icon has more than 500 homes booked to deliver in the near term. About 30% are social housing projects, with most of the rest being mainstream, market-rate housing. Icon has partnered with Lennar Corp., a major traditional homebuilder, to print a neighborhood in the Austin area.
"In the coming year, we'll build somewhere between 100 and 150 homes," he said. "So that'll kind of put us at the 'home per every two or three day' kind of run rate. And so we are really focused on becoming a home-per-day company. And then you go home per hour, a home per minute and a home per second. At a home per second, the math works out where you could solve the global housing crisis in your lifetime. That's where the numbers go."
It may not be as impossible as it sounds considering Icon printed its first home and revealed it at SXSW 2018 and is now looking at 500 orders. But scaling up will require the company to ramp up production of its large 3D printers and likely develop a new business model to allow other construction companies to use them instead of Icon's in-house team.
"Ultimately, to get a billion homes on the ground and for our technology to be responsible for the delivery of a billion homes in my lifetime, it does mean at some point the technology has to be in the hands of other people," Ballard said.
Working on higher-end houses is part of what will help Icon develop more affordable homes, as well.
"There needs to be a core profitable business at the heart of everything," Ballard said.
Debuting the new home at SXSW is part of the plan, largely because it worked so well in 2018. Ballard said that during that activation, the company met people who later became employees, investors, customers and partners.
"South by, whether they know it or not, I think is the most important cultural event and festival that actually regularly happens in America right now," Ballard said, noting that his old SXSW T-shirts have become treasured possessions. "The whole world comes to Austin, and so if you want to get as many opinions, thoughts, eyeballs, hearts and minds paying attention to what you're doing, it makes all the sense in the world."
With two recent major rounds of venture funding, Icon has now raised $451 million since its founding in 2017.
Ballard said the company plans to keep the property after SXSW as a model home for investors and builders to view for several years before selling it.
