ICON Completes World's Largest 3D Home Community Development In Texas

Illustration of the house built with 3D rpinter (photo: x @ICON3DTech)

JAKARTA - Construction technology company ICON has successfully completed the construction of the world's largest 3D home community in Wolf Ranch, totaling Texas, about 30 miles from Austin. The project started in November 2022 and will be completed this summer with 100 3D houses printed by ICON's robotic printer.

This 3D printer is more than 45 feet (13.7 meters) wide, weighs 4.75 tons, and is capable of printing residential houses. By using a mixture of cement, water, sand, and other additive powders, this printer imprints the concrete layer after layer that forms the walls of the house with effects such as corduroy.

According to Conner Jenkins, senior project manager of ICON, this technology brings high efficiency in the construction industry. "Where usually there are five different crew members who build a wall system, now we only need one crew and one robot," Jenkins said.

The one-story house with three to four bedrooms takes about three weeks to complete printing, while the foundation and metal roofs are traditionally installed. The concrete walls of this house are designed to be waterproof, fungi, termites, and extreme weather.

One of the shoppers of the house in Wolf Ranch, Lawrence Nourzad, along with his girlfriend Angela Hontas, is satisfied with their new home. "It feels like a fort," Nourzad said, adding that he believes this house will withstand most tornadoes. The concrete wall also provides good isolation against Texas heat, keeping the home temperature cool.

However, this strong wall has shortcomings in terms of internet connectivity. "The signal cannot penetrate this very thick wall," said Nourzad. To overcome this problem, most home owners in Wolf Ranch use a mesh internet router that spreads signals from several units across the house.

The price of a 3D house in Wolf Ranch, called the "Genesis Collection," ranges from USD 450,000 (IDR 7.1 billion) to nearly USD 600,000 (IDR 9.5 billion). More than a quarter of the 100 houses have been sold.

ICON, which first minted a 3D home in Austin in 2018, hopes to one day take this technology to the Moon. NASA has signed ICON as part of its Artemis Moon exploration program to develop a construction system capable of building runways, shelters, and other structures on the Moon's surface.