The first 3D printed model home concept Wolf Ranch development, built by Lennar and ICON and co-designed by BIG, has been completed in Georgetown, Texas.
The initial of what will eventually turn into a 100-home development outside the rapidly-expanding state capital showcases one of eight different floorplans, which range in scale from 1,574 to 2,112 square feet, offering buyers three-and four-bedroom options within an expected price range of $475,990 to $559,990.
Striated walls made using ICON’s Vulcan 3D printing technology and patented Lavacrete material define the residence’s design, which comes complete with polished concrete floors, a rooftop photovoltaic array, and fixtures and furnishings.
The remainder of the development, which features a playful variety of forms derived from the 24 different elevation styles offered by the company, is nearing completion after construction at the site first began just eight months ago.
ICON CEO Jason Ballard had said previously that he and the company feel very strongly that the development will help the industry chart a course towards the more efficient and inexpensive delivery of private residences, stating: “We still have a long way to go, but I believe this marks a very exciting and hopeful turn in the way we address housing issues in the world.”
3D-printed Homes Now Available at Wolf Ranch | ICON via ICON 3D-Tech
The project is one of several that ICON has pursued with the Danish heavyweights in Texas, including a 65-acre high-end resort collaboration with prominent hotelier Liz Lambert near Marfa and the Mars Dune Alpha habitat simulator where BIG’s Jakob Lange sat down with Archinect for a preview of in 2021.
Other high-profile residential projects by ICON include a three-structure military barracks outside of El Paso designed by Logan Architecture and another 2,000-square-foot Lavacrete residential design in Austin from Lake|Flato. ICON says it is the "largest-scale development of 3D-printed homes in the world." The first residents of the tract are expected to begin move-ins this September.
The grand opening of Wolf Ranch, showcasing the "first fully-furnished 3D printed model home," will take place on Saturday, July 22.
14 Comments
This is a achievement mostly in demonstrating how to increase embodied carbon in new single family homes
eight different floorplans, which range in scale from 1,574 to 2,112-square- feet, offering buyers three-and four-bedroom options within an expected price range of $475,990 to $559,990
How does this compare with conventionally built home of the same size in the same area?
Same. But the theoretical profit for the builder/developer may ultimately be higher if they ever find the promised production efficiencies.
Learn anything from Oppenheimer? This is another lesson about our technological intelligence outpacing our wisdom. A 3-D printed house but the same lame layout as any typical subdivision. More good jobs gone to the robots - and ironically less families able to buy the house that’s being created.
Hardly comparable to an atomic bomb. AI might be a problem of that scale someday, but this feels more akin to a new kind of construction system. Not sure how common this is in North America, but its pretty common for home builders to develop proprietary systems here in Japan all the time. Earthquake resistance walls, hyper-insulated, panelized system of one stripe or another. They are a way to differentiate in a crowded market and from what I can see after 20 years in Tokyo they fail as often as succeed and the success is about messaging more than need. My guess is that this project type will be the same.
Marketing 101 proposes that differentiation is either around cost or quality, and in this case they went for the latter. Not much more can be said about this, TBH. There is no reason to expect that 3d printed concrete homes would come along with a new kind of planning principle for instance. That implies a utopian business model, and this is so very much NOT that.
On the other hand the designs are nice, maybe they will find a wave to ride of some kind. But based only on this case study set I dont think they are going to be particularity impactful with only a shell made from concrete.
But lets see in a year or five. Maybe they have a better business model than is apparent on the surface. Or maybe they dont care and this is all a loss lead of some kind...
I’d argue that it’s going to be far worse than the atomic bomb. When 80% of the population is unemployable there will be social, psychological, and political crisis like never seen before. Almost certainly ending with a dystopian totalitarian government. The priming has already begun. Like the atomic bomb, the technology is almost inevitable now that the ground work is established. So putting the cat back in the bag is virtually impossible.
By “it” I’m referring to automation of labor in general, not just this particular system of course.
While I understand the concern Ive also done 3d printing with large robots and am not convinced it is the game changer it might become. 3d printing with plastic was supposed to change a lot, and it has certainly changed our attitudes about what we can customize on our own, but I dont have any sense that anyone was put out of work because a bunch of people set up 3d printers in their basement. This is a more professional version, and could be different, but I remain skeptical for the same reasons. Interior fit out, roof, windows, hvac, etc are still needed and the robots are finicky, requiring constant attention and feeding. In this iteration I see a method of construction entering the market but its not a killer app by any means. Maybe it helps ease the lack of builders out there, but replacing them is a stretch (at least for now). My office competes directly with factory homes (100% absolutely normal in Japan) for pricing and quality and unequivocally there are trade-offs for both approaches. We dont do the factory production because it is limiting in sooo many ways. BUT, when we build with wood all of our mass timber walls (close to zero 2x4s in Japan) are done with traditional joints cut by robots in a factory. Quality is high, tradition is maintained and nobody but nobody has lost their job because they arent building the old way. Instead they build faster and costs are kept down. Which is to say that automation is simply just a tool of production, neither positive nor negative in itself. Without the context of the industry I dont think it is possible to drop blanket statements about how bad the future is going to be because of changes in technology.
The last hundred years or so of US architecture (especially late 1940's to early 1950's) is filled with systems that tried to replace stick-built conventional methods for building detached homes. The new systems always fizzled out after a few years and maybe a few hundred homes at the most.
Things like Lustron houses, Consolidated Vultee houses (aka Fleet houses) and the Kwikset house.
THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Chicken Little
Before Jason Ballard became an entrepreneur, he considered becoming a priest. His speech is still peppered with the idiom of faith—wicked, angels, sacred—and, when he latches on to a subject he cares about, he assumes a rousing, propulsive cadence.
From a longish piece in The New Yorker on Ballard, Icon, and 3D printed housing. The Wolf Ranch project is mentioned.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/23/can-3-d-printing-help-solve-the-housing-crisis
But this project doesn't look like a leap of faith but rather a jump into the void. We've been doing a lot of that lately. Has the technology been tested on a project of this scale over a period of time, say 20 years, to see how it handles settling, weathering, leakage, whatever else they haven't anticipated? There's always something.
If it does ramp up to the levels of production needed to lower costs and turn a profit, can it manage the increased possibility of error? It looks like an imperfection or bad batch of cement in a spot or a mislaid row would necessitate complete demolition of whole walls. Conventional methods can make adjustments as a house is built or at least manage problems locally.
Down the road, how well can a 3D house be maintained to keep up its appearance and structural integrity? Can chips and scratches on the corrugated interior walls be patched and covered satisfactorily? How well will it take nails for pictures? Can the nail holes be patched? If a crack or seepage occurs in a wall, then what? They're not going to be able to bring the machines back.
There's a grim fatalism in such faith. We make ourselves utterly dependent on an uncertain technology, the centralized corporate structure that produces it, and a product that has no flexibility for the owner or a locality. Time was, a home owner, a local architect, and a handful of local contractors worked together to build a house.
I see the lowest common denominator of design. Are they any benefits to the technology, esthetically, structurally, or economically?
BIG has been invited to participate in the construction of the California Futurium.
After all that AI and robots etc they build this shit? So ugly.
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