Icon wants to revolutionize homebuilding with a '3D printing robot,' CEO explains

A crowd of people gathered on the grass next to an East Austin, Texas, middle school on a sunny afternoon in March, most of them staring at the house across the street. The striking construction, with undulating curved walls made of layers of cement, stands out from the mix of old and new homes that make up the gentrifying neighborhood.

The property dubbed “House Zero" was built by Icon, a company that is looking to revolutionize the homebuilding business. Icon CEO Jason Ballard said 3D printing will make houses more affordable — and more beautiful.

“3D printing and robotic construction actually enables us to do a lot of things we probably should have been doing all along and wish that we could have done but were too expensive until this moment,” Ballard told Yahoo Finance in a conversation in House Zero’s living room. “We wish that all houses were beautiful. We wish that all houses were comfortable and had good energy performance and sustainability. We wish that all houses had resiliency. But typically those are very difficult to achieve with conventional building methods.”

Indeed the three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom house is "beautiful": the layered curves, left as raw concrete on the interior and exterior, have an organic feel. Meant as a show house, it features Douglas fir accents and top-of-the-line finishings, fixtures and appliances.

House Zero's walls were built in 10 days with the Vulcan, a 9,500-pound 3D printing robot that Icon brought to the site. Ballard said the method saves on labor and materials, and that the curved walls, in addition to being aesthetically pleasing, add strength.

The curves, he said, “add structure and strength to the wall. So if I had a piece of paper and I stood it up, it would fall over. But if I folded the paper, it would stand up. It would add strength without any additional reinforcement or change in material properties. The wall system itself that you see this printed, to have this wall system replicated with conventional building methods would have doubled the cost of the wall system.”

Icon has built other residences, including cottages in Tabasco, Mexico, in cooperation with a nonprofit; a four-house development in East Austin; and barracks at Camp Swift about 40 miles southeast of Austin.

The company is about to embark on its most ambitious project by far — a 100-home community in the Austin area built in cooperation with homebuilder Lennar. They plan to break ground later this year.

For Ballard, it’s only the beginning.

“We need to be building millions of homes, and I hope in my own lifetime, neighborhoods, and then towns and eventually cities will be built by robots and drones," he said. "And I think that that future will be faster, more affordable, with more design freedom.”

Julie Hyman is the co-anchor of Yahoo Finance Live, weekdays 9am-11am ET. Follow her on Twitter @juleshyman, and read her other stories.

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