When Lawrence Nourzad began his house hunt in Austin, TX, he did not expect to end up in a home built by a robot.
The Austin native, 32, had long been eyeing condos near the city’s downtown area. At one point, he even put a deposit down on an under-construction unit in the St. Elmo Arts District, an up-and-coming hub for nightlife and dining.
But construction delays disrupted those plans. Faced with the high costs of continuing to rent, Nourzad and his girlfriend, Angela Hontas, 29, turned their gaze toward Wolf Ranch, an innovative new development north of the city.
Built by Austin-based construction technology firm Icon in collaboration with homebuilder Lennar, Wolf Ranch is the largest-scale development of 3D-printed homes in the world.
The 100-home development, about 30 miles north of downtown Austin, was constructed by a fleet of Icon’s Vulcan 3D printing robots, which pour thin strips of concrete to build walls layer by layer.
“Our plan was to stay urban in Austin for all the cultural reasons, and our friends live pretty centrally,” says Nourzad. But after learning about Wolf Ranch through the civil engineering firm where he works in business development, he was hooked.
“I did one model home tour, and that was pretty much it,” he said in a recent video interview. “I was on board and kind of sold.”
Earlier this year, Nourzad and Hontas closed on a 1,977-square-foot Jorn model in Wolf Ranch, paying about $487,000. With 20% down and the help of a mortgage rate buy-down from the builder, their payments are about $2,300 a month, far less than they had budgeted for an upscale apartment rental in Austin.
“It’s really exciting to be at the forefront of the change, the revolution, and we see our neighbors going viral on TikTok just shooting a little content of their homes,” says Nourzad. “The world is so curious about these changes that are coming, and we feel lucky and very stimulated to be the lab rats in a way.”
Angela Hontas and Lawrence Nourzad in front of their new 3D-printed home at the Wolf Ranch development near Georgetown, TX(Lawrence Nourzad)
Wolf Ranch is the largest-scale development of 3D-printed homes in the world. The 100-home development is about 30 miles north of downtown Austin, TX.(ICON)
How does Icon 3D print homes?
In 2018, Icon co-founder and CEO Jason Ballard unveiled the company’s first 3D-printed home, a modest 650-square-foot, single-story house, at Austin’s South by Southwest festival.
Since then, the company’s technology and output have expanded by leaps and bounds. Ballard believes that as it scales up, Icon has the potential to alleviate the housing shortage crisis by deploying fleets of its robots across the country to build homes faster and cheaper than traditional methods.
Icon says it has built more than 140 homes so far, using a home-sized robotic printer known as the Vulcan. Using a nozzle mounted between a pair of gantries, the Vulcan builds interior and exterior walls by pouring hundreds of layers of specialized concrete, like soft-serve ice cream from a dispenser.
The concrete is mixed on-site and fed to the Vulcan from another automated system, which Icon calls Magma. Software guides the process, enabling the operator to load a home floor plan that controls the printing process.
The Vulcan can build walls up to 10.5 feet tall, across a surface area of up to 3,800 square feet, according to the company’s specs.
The system can run around the clock in fair weather, and a 2,000-square-foot home takes about a week to print, Icon Chief Operating Officer Graeme Waitzkin said at a conference in Austin last month.
Currently, Icon’s construction costs are roughly comparable with those for traditional wall systems, but the company hopes to bring costs down as it grows, Waitzkin said.
Earlier this year, Icon unveiled its next-generation 3D printer, the Phoenix. With its nozzle mounted on a single articulated arm rising from a ground platform, the Phoenix can print multistory walls up to 27 feet high.
The Phoenix requires only a single operator, who can be remote or on-site. Icon charges $25 per square foot for wall-system projects using the Phoenix, or $80 for projects including foundation and roof.
In an interview with Realtor.com at Icon’s showcase model home in Austin, House Zero, Waitzkin said that the company is focused on building homes, rather than selling or licensing its advanced technology.
“We see ourselves as a technology-powered builder,” said Waitzkin. The company believes it is the best route to get 3D-printed homes on the market quickly and gain broad acceptance from homebuyers.(ICON)
What’s it like to live in Wolf Ranch?
Nourzad, the recent Wolf Ranch homebuyer, says he and his girlfriend are thrilled with their new home about a month after moving in.
The three-bedroom, two-bathroom home features an open floor plan, with the kitchen connected to the dining and living areas beneath a vaulted ceiling.
A long hallway off the main living space leads to the primary bedroom, with two guest bedrooms along the corridor.
“There’s something very hospitable about it, almost like the hotel experience with the long hallway,” says Nourzad. The open living space “flows from your afternoon to evening” and is great for hosting.
Nourzad was also impressed that the Icon-Lennar homes in Wolf Ranch were co-designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, the renowned architectural firm that designed The Spiral and West 57 in Manhattan.
The homes’ concrete-printed walls could be plastered over for a more traditional look, though most buyers opt to leave them bare. The subtle ribbing on the walls and the lack of any right angles give the homes a space-age desert look, like something from Tatooine in “Star Wars.”
Nourzad says that he’s found few drawbacks with the innovative construction system, noting that the thick concrete walls help keep energy bills low in the sweltering Texas summer.
Hanging artwork on the walls simply requires masonry screws, and for larger objects, there’s no need to find a stud. And in the event of a natural disaster, the home’s fortress walls are reassuring, says Nourzad.(ICON)
