Icon to icon: WeWork founder takes in next-generation 3D building printer at SXSW 

If 3D-printed homes are the future of the American neighborhood, then Austin just hosted that neighborhood’s biggest block party yet. 

Icon, a construction technology company specializing in 3D-printed homes, held a huge presentation and demo at the Long Center for the Arts on the shores of Lady Bird Lake. The company debuted a futuristic new printer at a fairly star-studded event, at least as far as construction technology announcements go. 

Adam Neumann and Bjarke Ingels watched the keynote presentation from the Dell Theater’s opera boxes. “Entourage” star Adrian Grenier, who lives on an eco-friendly ranch in nearby Bastrop, snuck in from a side entrance to take a front-row seat just before the presentation began. 

There was plenty of local flair, too. Compass agent and Tesla enthusiast Matt Holm parked a branded Cybertruck in front of the center. Hotelier Liz Lambert and Ingels, who are working with Icon on 3D-printed projects at El Cosmico hotel in Marfa, chatted before the show. 

The floor and first mezzanine of the 2,442-seat auditorium was packed. The main attraction was the company’s new Phoenix printer, a 75-foot robotic arm that looks like a construction crane with a gigantic tattoo gun on the end. 

“This is like our version of landing rockets,” Jason Ballard, Icon’s CEO, said on stage. “There were investors and board members that did not believe this was possible.”

Outside of its radically different look, the printer is also capable of building two-story structures as large as 24,000 square feet. One human can operate several printers at a time, and the Phoenix can be set up at a job site in three hours. 

Phoenix can also print foundations and roof structures, while the original printer could only do walls. 

The new printer allows Icon to print walls for $25 per square foot, down from the $315 per square foot it cost the company’s original printer in 2018. It’s also a signal of sustained progress–down from the more recent $45 per square foot cost registered at its Wolf Ranch development with Lennar. 

The program at Lady Bird Lake also featured other sorts of high hopes and serious money. Icon announced tens of thousands of dollars in awards for young architects who developed plans for low-cost homes using Icon’s technology as part of a contest to develop houses for under $99,000. Even though the event was held at South by Southwest, the land of free merch, a table hawked $35 t-shirts and $12 tote bags. 

Ballard said the company’s aim is to use its technology to cut the costs of housing development, which is currently stuck in what he calls the “housing doom loop.” As he described it, developers have to cut costs on design and quality to make projects pencil, causing governments to increase regulation, further raising costs.

“Even as housing is getting more expensive, it’s getting worse,” Ballard said. “You somehow have to make it cost less while at the same time making it better.”

Outside the theater on a large lawn, Icon set up one of the Phoenix printers. Backed by Austin’s steel-and-glass skyline, the printer loomed over a wavy gray sculpture, showing the types of precise, undulating facades it can churn out. It could be shipped out to a job site on a single truck. It could print several homes at once. It had prompted serious applause from Adam Neumann. 

For a moment, it seemed like the housing crisis had been solved. 

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