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On Thursday, Reuters reported that the construction startup ICON has nearly completed what will be the world’s largest 3D-printed housing development.
While ICON’s houses have conventionally constructed rooves and foundations, their walls are printed entirely on-site with a giant, gantry-mounted machine. This process has many advantages; the printed walls are strong, well-insulated, weather-resistant, and don’t need interior or exterior finish. And, most importantly, by helping automate home construction, 3D printing promises to make housing cheaper. Unfortunately, ICON has not met that final goal—at least not yet.
In April, Brian Potter, Senior Infrastructure Fellow at the Institute for Progress, calculated that ICON’s process is still more expensive than conventional construction. However, ICON is rapidly becoming more productive, something the broader construction sector has failed to do. Since 2022, the company reduced its construction costs by nearly 80 percent, from 160 dollars per square foot of wall to 34 dollars. Potter projects that if ICON continues to innovate at this rate, they will be able to build walls for under two dollars per square foot by their 100,000th house.
Whether ICON will continue its learning curve is an open question, but in the meantime, it is providing some much-needed experimentation in a generally static industry.
Malcolm Cochran, Digital Communications Manager
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