As part of the firm’s evolving partnership with ICON, BIG has once again teamed up with the Texas-based manufacturer to design a 100-home neighborhood in the tech company’s adopted hometown of Austin.
Proffered as a potential solution to the dearth of housing units in the U.S. market, the homes will be produced via ICON’s Vulcan 3D printer technology and touted as providing more longevity than traditional concrete masonry housing.
The plan in many ways resembles the classic American subdivisons that cropped up after World War II. America is facing an unprecedented housing affordability crisis that has disproportionately affected one’s ability to buy a home across multiple demographic levels. BIG announced a new affordable housing initiative called NABR over the summer that promises to address some of the same issues. 2020 saw the first year in which the primary means of homeownership in the U.S. went from income to inheritance.
“The things we use everyday, essentially the things we make a lot of, are getting better and better and more and more attainable except for our homes,” BIG’s founder said during the August announcement of NABR. “Our homes have only gotten more and more expensive, and arguably at a lower and lower quality. There is a huge potential to realize this process from end to end.”
The pair hopes to accomplish this through a combination of ICON’s technical savvy and the architect’s own penchant for “form-giving” that has led to prefab residential projects like Copenhagen’s Dortheavej and the 79 & Park development in Stockholm. ICON has likewise been able to deliver 3D-printed housing on a smaller scale in Austin and Nacajuca, Mexico. The flexibility of form provided by the technology comes through in curved walls and other design elements that make the houses’ profiles, according to the partnership, “aesthetically and physically unique.”
“ICON exists as a response to the global housing crisis and to put our technology in service to the world,” the company’s co-founder and CEO Jason Ballard said in a statement. “Construction-scale 3D printing not only delivers higher-quality homes faster and more affordably, but fleets of printers can change the way that entire communities are built for the better. We believe this will be a watershed moment in the history of community-scale development and the future breaking into the present.”
Construction on the houses is set to begin sometime next year.
1 Comment
If these things catch on they'll be a dream for developers and manufacturers, and a nightmare for everyone else. This is what happens when you approach a problem from limited perspective and turn it over to the major players who can't think beyond one dimension or past the bottom line.
I can't believe there won't be hidden costs.
Likely these developments will be further out, away from commerce and industry, as in the picture above. In a dense metropolitan area, they will be quite far out, as that is where, because of land costs and the limited incomes of buyers, they stand the best chance economically. Which means residents will be segregated more by income and will have to rely on longer commutes, with all that entails—energy consumption, traffic, road maintenance, pollution. More hours each week away from home and family. Add the costs of extending the infrastructure—sewers, streets, water lines, etc.
The assumption is these can be built without incident and will stand intact a long time. I don't believe it. Any screwup, I assume, can't be remedied in place but would require reloading entire sections of walls. If there are structural problems down the road? Then what? They can't bring the 3D printers in. When their life cycle has expired? These will be a messy demolition.
Maintenance? Can you paint these things? Or do you have to steam blast them? How well, how long do they keep up that surface?
I don't see an interior shot, and don't think I want to. Interior maintenance and decorating will be a challenge. As Miles pointed out in the previous post, you can't modify these homes.
The landscaping will have to be maintained to keep these developments from being utterly dismal. How likely? Water costs, droughts, sprinkler systems that go bad, etc.
Needless to say, the labor force is squeezed even tighter, pushed further down the economic ladder.
Yet somehow these are supposed to create a vital community.
We get the lowest common denominator of design, without character or any hint of regional influence—I guess this is where BIG comes in. And we get the lowest common denominator of who people are and what they are worth.
The obvious alternative is medium to high density housing, closer to urban centers, which will minimize many costs and bring people—all people—closer together into some kind of relationship. But developers can't think that way.
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