Icon, the local 3D-printing company with a penchant for planting its structures on open swaths of Austin parkland and West Texas desert, brought its marketing A-game to SXSW 2024.
The annual festival and conference is a tried-and-true platform for Icon to preach its housing gospel; the company debuted the first permitted 3D-printed house, built onsite in East Austin over a 48-hour period, at SXSW 2018.
This year, the company introduced a multistory 3D printer, a new AI tool for architecture and project management, a digital catalog of home designs, and an advanced low-carbon concrete.
Icon founder Jason Ballard presented the new products, which the company calls a "suite of products and technologies designed to further automate construction," Tuesday at a SXSW event called "Domus Ex Machina."
“It sets us up to build a more beautiful world that accords with the things people want and value, in a way that they can afford,” Ballard said of the new technology.
"In the future, I believe nearly all construction will be done by robots, and nearly all construction-related information will be processed and managed by AI systems," he said in an earlier press release. "It is clear to me that this is the way to cut the cost and time of construction in half while making homes that are twice as good and more faithfully express the values and hopes of the people who live in them."
ICON's new suite of robotics, software ,and materials includes a prototype of the Phoenix, a multi-story robotic construction system that completed a 27-foot-tall architectural demonstration structure currently on display at the festival.
The event also showcased Codex, ICON's digital catalog of ready-to-print home architecture; CarbonX, its new, low-carbon, extrudable/printable concrete formula; and Vitruvius, an AI system for designing and building homes.
Designs from the company's Initiative 99 — a global architecture competition to reimagine affordable housing that could be built for $99,000 or less "without sacrificing beauty, dignity, comfort, sustainability, or resiliency" — were also presented and winners announced.
Wells Fargo, which provided the prize money, also announced that its foundation has committed $500,000 in grant funding to Austin nonprofit Mobile Loaves and Fishes to facilitate the printing of Initiative 99-designed homes at Community First Village, a master-planned development that serves the local underhoused community. Upon completion of Phase II of the global design competition, Icon and Mobile Loaves and Fishes will select one winning design for multiple units Icon will deliver for Community First's planned expansion.
ICON and iconic hotelier and partner Liz Lambert also unveiled plan updates for their El Cosmico expansion in Marfa at the event. The 60-acre expansion of the rustic West Texas hospitality spot will include winning designs from the Initiative 99 contest where the existing "bohemian campground" is located, according to a press release.
Icon, Lambert, and BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group have teamed up to relocate El Cosmico, and add a a hotel, hospitality amenities, and homes to the mix. The project breaks ground this year.
Austin-based Icon was founded in 2017 and completed the nation’s first permitted 3D-printed home in 2018. Since then, its proprietary printing robotics, software, and materials have been used in a variety of projects, including collaboration on a high-design home with Central Texas architecture firm Lake Flato, outer-space prototypes, tiny homes for Community First, and a master-planned community underway north of Austin in Georgetown.
