Day 2: Keynote: Innovative Living— ICON’s Vision for 3D Printed Homes and AI-Driven Architecture Focused on Humanity

 

“If we’re not building with sustainable materials and we’re not designing with sustainability in mind, we’ll be in an even worse place environmentally.”  —Andrew Rothgaber

 

“We were able to achieve gold standard…so that people know that they have a higher chance that if there’s a hurricane that comes through, that they will not have a loss of property.”  Bungane Mehlomakulu

 

2024 WILDFIRE LEADERSHIP SUMMIT

 

Across the world, millions of people struggle to find affordable, high-quality housing. This crisis has far-reaching consequences, impacting communities, the environment, and the well-being of society. Hence, innovative solutions are urgently needed to provide dignified living spaces that are accessible to all. 

Leading ICON’s mission are Andrew Rothgaber, the Senior Director of Public Sector Business Development, and Bungane Mehlomakulu, the Director of Building Science and Performance. With backgrounds in robotics, engineering, and construction, this dynamic duo is spearheading ICON’s efforts to disrupt the industry and address the global housing crisis.

From exploring the durability and resilience of ICON’s 3D-printed wall systems to unveiling the company’s digital design tools, this discussion offers a glimpse into the transformative potential of this technology. Join the Q&A around this revolutionary innovation and learn how ICON is paving the way for a more accessible and visually stunning future of housing.

 

Highlights:

  • 00:22 ICON’s Mission and the 3 Elements of a Revolutionary Home  
  • 06:00 Facts About 3D Printed Homes
  • 12:03 ICON’s Printed Wall System
  • 18:41 Speed + Efficiency + Beauty + Affordable
  • 24:30 Q&A Segment 

 

Twitter:

Get a fascinating look at how @icon3dtech is using 3D printing to revolutionize home construction and address the global housing crisis. Tune in to learn more about how this tech is making dignified, sustainable housing more accessible. #Recover #Rebuild #Reimagine #podcast #wildfire #DisasterRecovery #AfterTheFire #2024WildfireLeadershipSummit #ICON #3DPrintedHomes #ConstructionTechnology #HousingCrisis #SustainableBuilding #DisasterResilience #InnovativeDesign #AffordableHousing #ScalableConstruction #FutureOfHomebuilding 

 

Quotes:

00:56 “A very high-performing home builder in this country might build 80,000 homes a year. That’s just not enough. We’re millions of homes short. And so icon set out to do things differently, and to do that, we realized we can’t just build a better home incrementally. We need a paradigm shift in the way we build and shelter ourselves.” —Andrew Rothgaber 

04:58 “If we’re not building with sustainable materials and we’re not designing with sustainability in mind, we’ll be in an even worse place environmentally.”  —Andrew Rothgaber

17:16 “We were able to achieve gold standard…so that people know that they have a higher chance that if there’s a hurricane that comes through, that they will not have a loss of property.”  Bungane Mehlomakulu

28:58 “There’s an opportunity to train the local workforce on jobs of the future. It’s something that we would actually embrace and run toward, rather than try to put up our defenses and avoid.” —Andrew Rothgaber 

33:56 “We’re not just talking about building new homes or rebuilding in areas that have been affected by mega fires or other disasters, but we also have a real shot here and making sure that they don’t burn down again.” —Jennifer Gray Thompson 

 

Meet Andrew Rothgaber, Senior Director- Public Sector, ICON

Andrew has been with ICON for the past three years, having moved to Austin from Oahu to work on the company’s mission of addressing the global housing crisis through innovative 3D printing construction methods. 

At Icon, Andrew oversees the company’s robotics, advanced materials, software, and architectural design efforts. He is passionate about using technology to deliver high-performing, beautiful, and sustainable homes at a lower cost and faster pace than traditional construction methods. He is committed to ICON’s goal of building a billion homes before retirement, in order to make dignified housing more accessible worldwide.

 

Meet Bungane Mehlomakulu, Director of Building Science and Performance, ICON

Bungane Mehomakulu is an expert in sustainable building design with nearly 20 years of experience in the built environment developing low-energy, high-performance solutions for buildings focused on the health and wellbeing of the people who use them. His career focuses on developing design solutions incorporating building needs, architectural intent, and building science and performance. He is actively engaged in local and national discussions to create a more sustainable built environment.

Connect with ICON:

 

Transcription:

Andrew Rothgaber: Anyone who wants to talk about the Moon Base later, I’d be happy to talk about that. I won’t be covering it here. Bungane and I are just going to talk about the mission of ICON. I moved to Austin, Texas to work at ICON about three years ago from Oahu. And I’ve been trying to get back ever since. So it’s really cool to see all these Maui folks here. So ICON is a construction technology company based in Austin. We’re about six years old, and we’re created really with one purpose in mind. And that’s to address the housing crisis. We just don’t build enough in this country and around the world. A very high performing home builder in this country might build 80,000 homes a year. That’s just not enough. We’re millions of homes short, and so ICON set out to do things differently. And to do that, we realized that we can’t just build a better home incrementally. We just need a paradigm shift in the way that we build and shelter ourselves. And so ICON set out to develop construction technologies that can deliver high performing homes at a lower cost, quickly and at scale. So I think that if you take one thing away from this presentation, I hope it’s the technology that you’re going to see in our presentation today that is out of the lab, so to speak. It’s in the field. It’s building things at scale. It’s ready to go. In case folks in the room aren’t familiar with what a construction scale reading thing looks like, you’ll notice a few things in the studio. 

The first is just how it works. We send robots to a job site. And the robots, it’s a seven tissue material that layer by layer, it builds phones, schools and other instructions. We send robots to the job site, unless we’re doing that’s pretty good. Another thing is that we can print at night. Robot level grants around the pump here. I think the final thing you’ll notice in this short clip here is that the structures just look really cool. They don’t look like conventional homes. We can make them look like conventional homes, but the robot just does what we tell it to do. And so if we want to build a home in the shape of a circle or a dome, that’s exactly what it’ll do. So that’s what it looks like on a job site. This way of building adds up to a handful of benefits. Some of what you see here. The first is that they’re just high performing structures. And what we mean by that is they are more affordable to operate to heat in the winter, and to cool in the summer. They’re easier to maintain. And they last a lot longer, so they’re just high performing structures. The second thing is that we can build really quickly, because the robots don’t ask for breaks. They just do what we tell them to do. That means that we can build at night, get the job done, move on to the next one faster, and that adds up to affordability. The houses can also be more affordable in large part because we can move so fast. These next three benefits are really important. You all have an open invitation to come visit us in Austin. And when you do, I think you’ll look around our lab and our factory, and realize that everyone’s got an energy about them. We all move and work with a sense of mission like a lot of the people in this room. And that mission is to build a billion homes before we all retire. So it’s a huge mission, and I think we have a shot at it. 

But if we’re even remotely successful at building a billion homes and we don’t have these three things in mind, we can actually do a great deal of harm if we’re building homes that aren’t beautiful. We’re building homes that are ugly, we’re not going to deliver on our mission to deliver dignified housing for everyone. And if we’re not building with sustainable materials, and we’re not designing with sustainability in mind, we’ll be in an even worse place environmentally. And then resilience is important too. Because if we can build anything like a billion homes and they’re not built to withstand the kinds of disasters that we’re talking about in this room, and after every disaster, we have to rebuild those communities. That’s not good either. So we take these three things really seriously at ICON, and we feel a great deal of responsibility about them. We built over 150 structures. So what Jen said at the beginning, is really important to call out. We’re doing this at scale. From the first time we printed there in the upper left, 350 square feet took about 48 hours of print time, all the way to delivering 100 home neighborhoods. We’ve come a long way in about six years. So these are just some highlights that you see here. Community First village. I know a handful of folks in the room have been there. Governor Josh Green visited a couple years ago. 

This is a community in Austin that’s designed to get people back on their feet. ICON will have printed over 100 homes there when we’re done. The home that you see here in the lower left is a hurricane resilient home that we built on the Texas Gulf Coast. It’s Crystal Lopez here. We couldn’t have done that. There she is. We couldn’t have done that without Krista at the Glo. Those homes we’re really proud of. Those homes are meant to replace homes, or did replace homes that folks lost to Hurricane Harvey in 2017. You can imagine the profile of somebody who lost their home in 2017 to a hurricane, and still didn’t have one. That was with CDBG-DR Funding. We’ve also built barracks, you see there in the lower middle. We built event spaces. So we do way more than homes, but homes are really what we’re most excited about. This is a home that we built in East Austin called House Zero. This is an architecturally award winning home. We built this home really with one purpose in mind, and that was really to make a point. And the point we wanted to make is that 3D printed homes aren’t just novel homes or really cool homes. They’re actually just really good homes, period. And we think they can beat conventionally built homes on a number of factors. The one that’s probably standing out the most here is Beauty. So this home, we gave the architects really two pieces of direction. Designed something that’s mid century, modern inspired that could only be built with a robot, and this is what they came up with. We call it House Zero. 

Important thing to call it here is the homes that we’re building in East Austin and elsewhere for affordable people, people who are just trying to get back on their feet. The same robot built those homes that built this home. The robot, again, just does what we are told to do. Can do luxury homes. It can provide affordable homes. Another example I wanted to share with you is the 100 home neighborhood that we just finished north of Austin in Georgetown, Texas. This is 100 homes. The entire neighborhood was 3D printed. We did this in partnership with Lennar and the Bjarke Ingels Group. But it’s a pretty remarkable achievement for us, because nobody had ever attempted something doing 100 homes all built by robots. And if you come to Austin, we’ll be happy to show you. One thing I wanted to call out about this development was not just the technical achievement of building 100 home neighborhoods with robots, but these homes are on the market. They’ve sold. People are living in them. They’re posting TikTok videos about how cool it is to live in these homes. So this is our first real signal that there is demand, and there is interest from people to make the biggest investment of their lives in a 3D printed home. So that was a really validating figure for us. Talk a little bit about how the company is organized and how we sort these really complex problems. We’re organized around these four areas. I’ll talk about the first two, and then pass it to Bungane to talk about the next two. But in short, we’re focused around robotics, advanced materials, software and architecture. The robot is what tends to get a lot of the media attention. We have two robots. 

The first one is called Vulcan. That’s over 150 structures. If we were to do a project tomorrow, it would be with Vulcan. If we were to do one in 26 or beyond, it would be with Phoenix. And I’ll tell you why in a minute here. So Vulcan is a gantry style printer, which means that anything in this print bed can deliver. So we’ve printed three homes in one print bed. We could print four homes in one print bed, or just one big home in a print bed. This is the printer that we’re really most proud of, because it’s delivered everything that we’ve done so far. But it has some limitations. Namely that it moves on those rails that you can see, and the rails take about 24 hours to set up, which doesn’t sound like a long time in construction terms. But at ICON, it’s just unforgivably slow because it adds cost to the final product. And so before I get to the next one, I just wanted to show you this picture. I really love this picture because it’s a job site on a Sunday morning. This is actually probably a Tuesday afternoon, and you can notice a few things about what an ICON job site looks like. The first, I think, is that it’s just very clean, and it’s very orderly. The second is that there aren’t a lot of people on this job site. If you squint, you can see maybe six or seven people, and they’re just kind of monitoring the printers, monitoring the robots with tablets as they go. Another thing you’ll notice is that we have six or seven robots deployed to this site. This is the 100 home neighborhood taken about halfway through the project. So it’s quite a sight to behold. I think when you step onto this job site, it’s like stepping into the future. Somehow, you just feel like, why aren’t we building this way everywhere? It’s a very natural thing, but it looks very unnatural and very futuristic. But that’s what Vulkan looks like on a job site. 

Phoenix is our new printer, and Phoenix is different in a number of key ways. The first is that, as you can see, it’s got some tank treads there. And so we don’t need 24 hours to set up. Phoenix can just roll into a job site and start printing. So it’s lower setup time, lower cost, and also has a much bigger build volume. Which means that we can do multi story. And so without setting up those rails, Phoenix can move around a job site, print a home, print to school. And then without even moving, it can just swivel to the other side of the job site, and do the same there. So this is a much bigger capability. And this is what we’re going to be delivering all of our projects with starting in around 2026, but it’s not just a rendering. We actually have an engineering prototype. This is a home that we call the House of Phoenix, right across from our headquarters in Austin, Texas. It’s actually just an architectural demonstration. And the purpose of this demonstration was to show off what Phoenix could do, because we didn’t want to ask people to just take our word for it and show them a rendering. So we created a prototype Phoenix printer, and then we built this really beautiful sculptural structure that’s our headquarters right there across the street. But it really does show off. Again, the robot just does what we tell it to do. It can print a rectangular box that looks like a conventional home, but why would you want it to if we could print something like that? So that’s Phoenix. The second part of our company is advanced materials. I think the highest concentration of PhDs at ICON is in our Advanced Materials Department. So there’s a lot I could say here. 

But for this room, the thing I wanted to share with you is that our new material is called CarbonX. We unveiled it in March of this year. It’s a low carbon material. So we care a lot about sustainability and resiliency, but we print with a cementitious material. So we’ve always known that cement being the second most used material on Earth after potable drinking water comes with a pretty large carbon footprint. So our material scientists have been working on a new material for quite some time that is low carbon, and that material is called CarbonX. In An MIT University study, this material concluded it is the lowest carbon way of building a single family home compared to a stick frame. This is pretty cool that we’re faster, we think we’re more beautiful, we think we’re more affordable, and now we’re also low carbon. So that’s material. One more thing, this is our material batch plant in Austin, Texas. I wanted to share this with you just so you can all see that we have a material batch plant, which means that we can test and iterate on the material in real time. So we’re trying to be as vertically integrated as possible, and this material batch plant is a great symbol of that. Now, I’ll pass it to Bungane to talk about our wall system. 

Bungane Mehomakulu: Thanks, Andrew. I’m going to talk a little bit more about what we do with that technology stack, and how we’re actually able to deliver and print a printed home and structure. And so for anyone who’s watched a home go up and under construction, or spend some time on a job site, or maybe it’s your own home and you’ve done some remodeling, why don’t you take a moment to think about what is involved in actually creating that exterior envelope? So this is a typical stick frame home that’s built often, definitely throughout Texas. Here in California, that exterior cladding probably changes. It might be brick, it might be plaster on the side, but there’s all these layers. So if you think of working from the outside, you’ve got siding or plaster or brick, you’ve got the sheathing that’s needed for structural purposes, you have the framing, you have the weather barrier, you have insulation. And on the inside, you get drywall tape, float and paint, lot of different layers, and also a lot of different trades involved. And those trades are busy. They’re in high demand. And there can often be delays in the time it takes to move from one job site to the next job site. And some of the challenges that builders face today as well is that they will actually have a subcontractor who will finish a group of homes and then say, okay, I’ve gotten a better price at the next job site. 

I’m going to move over there. CMU block wall is not a lot different. The ICON wall system, which you see on the right side, and printed wall systems in general are a lot of them. They basically replace all of those layers and different systems with a printed shell. So on the outside, we’ve got one printed shell. We’ve got insulation in the middle, and then we have the printed shell on the interior side. You can apply block filler and paint, or a clear coat. So this is a much simplified system. It’s basically down to three systems of which there is really one trade involved in terms of printing the wall itself. It is a fully reinforced system. It’s a question that we often get is, okay, this is a concrete wall. Is there reinforcement in the system? There’s actually several different types of reinforcement. There’s horizontal reinforcement that’s in the print itself. There’s some reinforcement that ties the two shells together. And then there’s reinforcement that connects the foundation, the wall and the roof altogether. And then in the middle, we’re able to have insulation. And these are actually very well performing walls. So this is our standard wall. This is what we deliver for any project that we’re going to be working on, and really establishes the minimum requirements. And so this is equivalent to an R22 wall. And this is a mass wall, so it’s able to hold its energy and in a place. And particularly like the west coast in California. 

Another is where you have large temperature swings. That is actually fantastic because it reduces energy consumption over the year. The other thing about this is that our standard wall comes with a two hour rating, we’ve tested for this, and it also is able to withstand up to 250 mile hour winds. So this is without any changes in the engineering. This is not adding additional sheathing, nailing patterns, or some of the other complexity that you get with stick framed walls. We’re able to deliver this as part of our standard conventional approach, and we know this because we’ve done testing on our system. So this is a video that runs through some of the structural testing that we’ve done. So we’ve worked with third party labs to actually check and confirm, how does the wall actually perform? Because that’s one of the questions that comes up. How do you know that your engineering works? We’ve taken the time to do the main structural testing. We’ve also done fire rating testing. We’ve done the cyclic load testing that’s necessary to get that wind rating so that we understand how we’re actually able to design, build with this particular system. This is a favorite of ours in the office. It’s gonna play through a couple times, but this is for a tornado shelter. So we’ve taken an ICON wall system that is about 14 feet, 2 by 4 throwing at 100 miles per hour. So this is for tornado shelters. The wall survived. The two by four did not. And in fact, there was actually very minimal damage. 

So the great thing about the printed wall systems is its durability, and its strength that you get from it. Along with this, in addition to all doing all the testing, we’ve worked with a number of different organizations, or in the process of working with a number of different organizations starting on the far your left, my right. We’ve worked with ICC. So right now, another question that comes up is, well, how are these not built to code? There’s no building code for this is a common thing that you will see on social media. I can say, for all ICON structures, they have all been built to code. They’ve all been fully permitted. They’ve been designed by an NGO record. And from what I understand of anybody else who’s done 3D printing, that is also true. So in the absence of a specific code that goes in, and you can’t go in and look up and see that this is how you design for a stick frame is what you can do in the code. Today, you don’t have that section for printed construction, so ICC has developed what’s called an acceptance criteria. And that defines how you’re actually able to with testing work with a printed system. So this is a publicly available document. You can go on to the ICC Evaluation Services website. Look up ICON under the reference manual, and you can see how our wall system’s engineered. So this makes it accessible for other engineers to understand how to work with our wall system, if there’s ever a need to also back it up by testing. We are also involved in the actual writing of code. So ICC, ASTM and one or two other organizations are also working on ACI. American Concrete Institute are working on how to actually develop code language that can go into building codes, and so we’re involved in how that work is done along with folks from academia and other organizations. 

So Andrew mentioned the homes on the Gulf Coast that we did with the GLO, so there was a requirement to design to IBHS fortified standard. We were able to achieve the gold standard. This isn’t just about the walls. This is about the foundation connection. This is about the roof connection. These are the windows, the doors, so that people know that they have a higher chance that if there’s a hurricane that comes through, that they will not have loss of property. We have also started to explore and understand what it means to actually create a printed structure that is able to meet the requirements for IBHS wildfire prepared program and the Firewise program, as you are all keenly aware of the home in itself. And how you actually protect the homes, only a small portion of that is also about how you design the community itself. And then lastly, we’re in the closing stages of working with the state of Florida for high wind certification so that we’re able to basically build in the highest wind zones in the country. And then, of course, a big question for this group I’m sure is like, well, where are you at with seismic right now? So right now, that acceptance criteria that I mentioned that ICC has developed, it really only allows for seismic design categories A and B. So there is still work to be done on how you actually get into seismic zones. 

So today, we can do a ly printed wall that basically conforms to the existing code, but that basically means that you’re just using that printed wall as formwork. You’re then filling it in, and really creating a concrete reinforced wall that conforms to the code. We have started down the path, and it takes a while to do the testing and the design to understand, how can you create a natively based printed wall system that is able to withstand seismic loads? And the idea behind that is we want to be able to deliver that same speed, efficiency and durability that we have with our standard wall system with a seismic wall system as well. And the whole point to this, and what we’re really interested in doing, and you saw this in some of the projects we worked on, is that we really want to be able to create beautiful structures. So you see here some examples of this freedom of form. So the printer doesn’t really mind if it goes in a straight line, or if it’s running in a curve, or if it’s to be able to create unique patterns. And the idea is that we’re able to create some variation and some beauty in homes that otherwise today really aren’t receiving them. If you go to a production builder site, they are doing the best that they can to deliver the lowest cost home possible. I’m not sure that we would all agree that they’re not necessarily beautiful homes, but they are very keenly interested in being sure that those are as low as cost as possible so that they can be as affordable as possible. The printed technology provides the opportunity to add and return beauty to these structures. So these are all actual structures, and that have been delivered. These are actually delivered to a customer in the Austin area. And this is a pavilion that you can see in Austin itself. It’s on the south shores of Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas. Wanted to call it Town Lake for anybody who’s been to Austin, but it’s Lady Bird Lake today. And it is out across from a long center. 

So this is an entirely printed structure that we create. And unveiled at Southwest last year. And it’s something that is available for anyone to go and see. And you actually can watch YouTube videos of people trying to skateboard and ride their bikes across it as well. And then this is a shot of the inside of House of Phoenix. And so this is inspired, I’m sure that anybody who’s been through some of the Canyons that are in the West Coast coastal areas, that this is what this is inspired by. And so this is really being able to return beauty with 3D printed construction, and do it in a way that’s cost effective, and that can be more accessible to lots of folks. And the big idea is that we want to be able to take all of this and really turn it into homes, and make those, the whole home process, accessible, so that the time that it takes to build the home is just a portion of the work that goes into actually completing construction. There’s a lot of work that’s on the design side. And so to help address that, one of the things we did is to incorporate these forms to actually launch Codex. So today, during a break, you can go to our website, and you can go to Codex. And Codex is a digital collection of homes that is available for design and printing. You can explore them. They range in size. There’s over 40 homes on the site. They range in size from 750 square feet to over 4000 square feet. And you’re intended to hit across all price points. And really, this is just the beginning. 

The idea here is that we are going to continue to add to the Codex collection, and that a developer, a community, a builder would be able to go onto this website. Identify which homes they want to be able to build, download all the information that is necessary for them to execute that print as well as the construction process, and be able to deliver those homes in a timely manner. So today, there’s information you can see here, you’re able to really change the way that you’re able to interact with a home before it is actually built, and understand what it might be like to live in that home. In these dollhouse, manipulatable dollhouse models, there are full renderings that show how these homes can be built. And this is actually a picture of a community that we’ve actually just started building just outside of Austin, Texas. This style of home. It’s called part of the alpha beta collection, and within that Codex collection. We’ve imagined a series of other possible collections, including TexNext, which is a Texas inspired theme of homes. As well as the larger alpha beta collection, as well as some other one off projects that we’ve created. And we’ve also started to consider and contemplate what it actually would mean to create a firehome collection. So what does that actually look like to create and print a home that is fire resilient. 

And then lastly, the thing that we’ve also worked on and released is Vitruvius, which is an AI architect. So this is really intended to address that question around, how can you actually create and provide the flexibility for people to go in and have an interactive experience, and access to an architect that can help them design their own home? So again, during a break today or after I’m done speaking, you can go onto the website, and you can start to interact with Vitruvius today. It’ll give you some renderings, a floor plan, and some interior views. It’s in beta form right now. The idea is that this will actually be able to help address all the stages through construction, so that someone will be able to go on onto the site, have an interaction with the AI itself, and be able to get some inspiration of what their home might possibly look like. And you can actually have some fun with this right now. You can deliver something that is very conventional or traditional, or there are some rather other worldly options and styles that are possible to choose from, which you’ll see an example of here. You can actually also go and explore all of the other generations that folks have considered. I’ve actually created a Pokemon house and a Minecraft home. You can have some fun with the AI itself. It’s not all concurrently based fully in reality. And so what we’re really interested in here at ICON is, how can we actually develop the tools, not just the construction methods, but also how do we solve those other technological problems that exist within other parts of the home delivery process? 

Thank you for joining us today to really think about, how can we actually create and build a better future? What are the tools that we need? What are the barriers that currently exist? And how do we actually start to solve some of those problems so that we can have communities be rebuilt faster, that we can deliver more housing and more affordable price points, and really create a different way of building our homes and structures we want? She wants us to break out the AI stand.

Audience 1: Virtually every picture I see a pancake flat site where the machine can run, what’s the ability to build on a slope?

Bungane Mehomakulu: So today, I got to that wolf ranch site. We are able to handle change in grade around up to six or seven feet. That is one of the challenges with the Vulcan printer. And so, yeah, most of those pictures appear to be relatively flat slopes or flat sites. And that is one of the benefits of why we see that Phoenix is really the way in the future forward, because it is able to traverse and deal with better terrain. You don’t have to have all that setup time to be able to actually level the rails, and get everything set up and working properly. 

Amanda West: I’m Amanda with IBHS. I have a question about repairs. So if for some reason that it cracks or anything like that on the side, is it easy to repair? How does that work?

Bungane Mehomakulu: How we address repair is that we actually provide homeowners, when they get their home, they actually get a manual and a kit that actually tells them how to interact and work with a 3D printed structure. It actually tells them how to do very basic repairs. So one of the common questions that you’ll see people ask on social media, and they ask us very regularly, how do I hang up a picture? How do I hang up a TV? And that is actually very straightforward. You can go down to Home Depot, you can grab the same masonry tools, and you can create that hole. Now, what happens if you put that TV or the picture in the wrong spot, or you’ve just bought it? You’re the second owner of a 3D printed home. You can actually go down also to Home Depot, or Lowe’s, or your local hardware store and buy the same supplies that allow you to basically fill that hole, and then be able to paint over top of it. So larger scale damage or any repairs that have to be undertaken, if there’s actual structural damage to the wall, you’d have to do the same work with a structural engineer to get that repaired any other cosmetic damage. There are also instructions on how to work with that, as well as how to access any of the MEP systems or anything else along those lines. 

Dr. Christa Lopez: Couple questions that came up when, I’m sorry, Christa Lopez. When we were building for disaster survivors in Texas we’re like, how do you put electricity in? How do you lay the utilities? How do I set my house up to look like a normal house? Because we had a lot of people who were afraid that if we built them a 3D printed house, they would stand out in their neighborhood. We had this conversation about how to make folks feel like it was normalized to be that type of home in their neighborhood. So can you talk about utilities first, and then how the house can be shaped to fit the community?

Bungane Mehomakulu: So from a community perspective, that’s something that we engage in with the developer or the builder who’s working on the project, and that really sets the character. So the wolf ranch project, there was a massive developer, in addition to working with Lennar, that helped establish the character and the look of those homes so they fit into the surrounding community. With respect to electrical and plumbing, that is all integrated into the wall system. And it’s part of the construction. And what we do is we actually work to make it so that the trades have an easy access to anything that they need to get to. So for them, it isn’t a massive change in the way that they’re actually able to put in electrical, plumbing or anything else. And in the same thing as we also provide homeowners with information on where the pipes are located so that they understand that if they have an issue with a sink, a shower or something like that, that they don’t have to break through a concrete wall to get at it. That it is actually just behind either a vanity or the tile in their shower. The same as it would be in a framed home. 

Jennifer Gray Thompson: I have a question. So one of the barriers that we see all the time to innovation, and we have to innovate in order to get through this next era of climate change is the understanding that local governments often have trouble with that. And also, have you encountered any opposition from unions, like Carpenters Unions, that could be a big barrier because they reasonably want to protect their constituency, which I’m very pro union. But have you come up against that? Because what I’m hoping for is that they can actually be trained to build the future. But how do you deal with the barriers to innovation, to the entry part of that?

Andrew Rothgaber: We haven’t had that issue yet. In Central Texas, like a lot of parts of the country, there’s a construction labor shortage. We see that trades are retiring, and their children and grandchildren are coming into the trades. And so that hasn’t been an issue we face yet. But I think we’re prepared to deal with it, where and when we face it. Because for exactly the reason you pointed out, Jen, this is still a construction industry. People who used to swing a hammer can now operate a robot. We have print operators who come from all walks of life to ICON. And within a matter of weeks, they’re operating a robot. They’re the first people in the history of humanity to ever hold that job. And so there’s an opportunity to train local workforce on jobs of the future. There are a lot of opportunities that we get from universities and local municipalities to do STEM education. So it’s something that I think we would actually embrace and run toward, rather than try to put up our defenses and avoid.

Jennifer L.: I just want to say that was a great question from Jen. I’m Jennifer (inaudible). I own the (inaudible) Portfolio of Companies. We work on systems change related to housing and homelessness, and the affordability crisis. Andrew, you speak my language when you talk about a billion houses in your lifetimes. So just on Jen’s follow up, we work on a scaling strategy, which is how to think about in California planning and building 3,000, 5,000, 10,000 units at a time. And we’ve done financial modeling, and we’ve been costing it out looking at modular housing. I will say the factory OS, which I think declared bankruptcy, did work with the carpenters. They’re the one place where the unions have found an entree point. But my question to you is, you’re showing 100 unit communities right now, but at what point would you be able to begin to cost out? If I can show you a community in Fresno, 10,000 units around the high speed rail. San Diego, 3 to 5,000 units. At what point would you all be willing or able to cost out what it would take to build your robots, and bring them to a community, and know what that sweet spot is like, how many homes, or how much dollar volume that we would be able to deliver for you to build your product? And would you be able to say that it’s going to be at this cost per square foot? Because I think that’s where we are in California, I know that we need at least 2.5 million units. And so we’re thinking, how do we do that? Again, not 1, 200 unit project at a time. But 2,000, 5,000 units. So just want to know where you are in your scaling planning, and able to articulate that to people like me and my clients who are trying to solve that problem today?

Andrew Rothgaber: I’d answer it in a few ways. And Bungane maybe you have some thoughts as well. The first is that, to build a billion homes, our 350 person company can’t do that. We need to take this technology, and put it in the hands of other people. And so that’s the next chapter of our company is getting Phoenix ready for serialized production, so that we can sell and lease it to people all around the world, so that they can create their own companies. And together, we can build a billion homes. When would we be ready to start modeling something like that out for your community? Today, we could start doing that. Today, we like to say that the new minimum for a project is 100 homes. In fact, we have projects in our pipeline that are far bigger than that. And some that are smaller than that as well. But we know how long these things take, and so the challenge is accepted. We would start on that with you today. And then the last thing I would say is you saw a lot of single family, single story homes in our slideshow. One of the benefits of Phoenix is that it can do multi story. So Phoenix can do two, three stories of 3D printed floors. And then we can build conventionally on top of that. So we know that we need to run into our multifamily future, and Phoenix is going to help us with that as well so we can build densely.

Audience 2: Hi, I was really excited when I said the last time you were here, and I’m even more excited now. Do you currently have structures, houses in particular, that can be built in places in California, like Sonoma County, Marin County, anywhere along any of our major vaults that would be permitted?

Bungane Mehomakulu: We have actually been talking to folks that are in seismic design. So seismic design categories is how structural engineers classify the loading that’s placed on the structure from a seismic perspective. And so most of California is in C, D, E and F. And so we actually have been in talks with folks to be able to deliver homes and structures in those higher seismic design categories. What we would be able to do, we’re basically doing bookings right now. In 2025, we’d be able to do that. Now, what we are working towards is being able to have a custom designed 3D printed wall that is able to be delivered affordably at scale where we’re actually using the 3D printed material as the structure, as opposed to just having it to use as formwork. But today, we will be able to do that. That is what we have been having conversations with folks in those seismic design categories.

Jennifer Gray Thompson: I would like to say this too, and thank you so much for making this trek out here. Because one of the things for people who work in climate all the time, as I’m sure you know, is that we need hope. We cannot just do this climate doom where we all escape to this one corner of the universe together. There’s not enough room for us. But also, I definitely see the people of ICON and the people in your company who’s running towards the future to solve the problem. And one of the things that we need to also look at is we’re not just talking about building new homes or rebuilding in areas that have been affected by mega fires or other disasters, but we have a real shot here, making sure that they actually don’t burn down again. That is not really in the rest of the home building in the same way as you guys are tackling, and it’s a big problem. I’m just so grateful to you for making this trek and the work that you do. I’m a super fan girl, as most of you probably have gotten some kind of hysterical email from me like, have you seen this? Have you watched them on 60 Minutes? Because it really is big, dreaming, important work. I want to thank you so much for that. 

Bungane Mehomakulu: Thanks very much for having us. Go online, and you can go explore both Codex, as well as have some fun with Vitruvius AI either designing a very serious home or just having some fun as well. It can be a bit of a time suck if you start doing it at work.

Jennifer Gray Thompson: Okay, all right. And thank you so much. 

How to disaster logo

Recent episodes: