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Located alongside the scenic San Gabriel River in the hills of Georgetown, TX, the Wolf Ranch community of 3D-printed homes by ICON in collaboration with Lennar is minutes from everything. This modern community blends the Texas Hill Country with access to the entire Austin metro area.

Explore the Genesis Collection at Wolf Ranch

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

Built by ICON and Lennar, one of the nation’s leading homebuilders, and codesigned by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, the innovative community of one hundred 3D-printed homes features eight floorplans, 24 elevations and will be powered by the sun with rooftop solar panels.

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100 Homes

08 Models

24 Elevations

How We Build

The Future of Homebuilding

ICON’s 3D-printed, high-performance homes feature elevated architectural and energy-efficient designs that highlight the benefits of resiliency and sustainability with the digital possibilities of additive construction. Delivered at speed and at scale using a fleet of ICON’s Vulcan robotic construction systems, software and advanced materials, each home’s full wall system including interior and exterior walls are produced with less waste and with more design freedom.

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Robotic Construction

We Make the Machines, Materials, and Software

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Construction-scale 3D printing not only delivers higher-quality homes faster and more affordably, but fleets of printers can change the way that entire communities are built for the better.

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The Genesis Collection – ICON

Homes at Wolf Ranch

Built by ICON and Lennar, one of the nation’s leading homebuilders, and co-designed by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, the innovative community of one hundred 3D-printed homes feature eight floorplans, 24 elevations, and will be powered by the sun with rooftop solar panels.

03 Bedrooms | 02 Baths | 1,574 Sq Ft

This stylish single-story home located in the incredible community of Wolf Ranch has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and boasts more than 1,500 square feet of living space, a rear patio and an open floor plan for entertaining. The primary suite sits off the living area, and includes a beautiful walk-in closet, a double vanity, a standalone tub and shower.

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03 Bedrooms | 02 Baths | 1,781 Sq Ft

The perfect home for entertaining, Genesis 02 has an open floor plan that allows you to see your guests or family across the kitchen, living and dining spaces. This spacious 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom single-story home features a large walk-in closet in the primary suite, as well as a double vanity, a standalone tub and shower.

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03 Bedrooms | 02 Baths | 2,014 Sq Ft

A private primary bedroom retreat anchors this home and provides a sanctuary with its own patio. The focal point of the home is the open kitchen, which connects to both the living and dining spaces—a host’s dream. The 3-bedroom, 2-bath home offers ample closet space, large windows and a spacious kitchen island.

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03 Bedrooms | 02 Baths | 1,977 Sq Ft

Genesis 04 is a 3-bedroom, 2-bath home with nearly 2,000 square feet of living space, in addition to a 385-square-foot outdoor patio. Large sliding doors off the living room allow you to bring the outdoors in. The primary bedroom offers a large walk-in closet.

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04 Bedrooms | 02 Baths | 1,993 Sq Ft

This 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom home is perfect for those looking for larger space. It boasts more than 2,000 square feet of living space and flex spaces that could be used for a home office—or even two. The primary suite sits towards the rear of the house, offering privacy for its occupants. The gorgeous en-suite bathroom features a large walk-in closet.

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03 Bedrooms | 02 Baths | 2,010 Sq Ft

Genesis 06 has an open-concept living room attached to a spacious patio, allowing for both indoor and outdoor entertaining. Large glass sliding doors allow the space to fill with natural light or close out the outside world. The home offers 2,000+ square feet of living space with an open-concept kitchen.

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04 Bedrooms | 03 Baths | 2,031 Sq Ft

Genesis 07 is a 4-bedroom, 2.5-bath with ample living space for homeowners. The open kitchen sits between living and dining spaces, allowing for seamless transitions and entertaining.

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04 Bedrooms | 03 Baths | 2,112 Sq Ft

A 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom home, The Genesis 08, offers over 2,000 square feet of living space. The front door allows for side entry and greater privacy in the home. Upon entering the foyer, there is a separation between living and dwelling spaces. This home offers a large, open kitchen and dining space with an adjacent living room and access to the outdoors.

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Reservations Begin 2023

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Construction 3D printing is waiting for a breakthrough The first construction projects using this technology appeared only in 2014. We are talking, first of all, about the so-called small architectural forms (benches, flower beds, fences). They never even dreamed about building houses. But already in 2015, the Russian startup Apis Cor made a splash - it printed a whole house in the Moscow region. Since then, news about new 3D printed houses has periodically appeared. However, despite the fact that the technology proved to be very promising in terms of the speed of construction of housing and the reduction in the cost of construction, no mass implementation followed.

Construction is the world's number one market. And, if many technological innovations are being introduced in the field of high-rise construction, then little has changed in the field of low-rise construction over the past decades. The last 30 years have seen the availability of the Internet, mobile phones, mobile internet, robotics taken to a new level, etc., but when you get to a house construction site, you are unlikely to find many technological innovations. Automation is practically non-existent, and manual labor prevails. 2020 was a test of strength for the whole world, and also led to the highest level of inflation, which, first of all, hit the construction market, there was a dramatic change in prices for metals, cement, wood and much more.

This Internet meme shows what happened to the cost of building materials in just a year. And the process is still going on. At the same time, there is a serious rise in the cost of labor, and there is an acute shortage of it. All this leads to a sharp rise in the cost of building houses. No matter how strange it may sound, statistics show that the growth of automation does not occur when everything is fine, but precisely in crisis situations, during increased competition, reduced demand and the need to urgently look for new technologies to increase production efficiency. So it happened this time, and after some stagnation, construction 3D printing received a new impetus for development.

Preparing to write an article, I turned to the founder of Arkon - Boris Kozlov y. Arkon was established in 2020 and is engaged in the production of construction 3D printers, both a workshop type for creating prefabs (prefabricated houses) and a portal one capable of printing a two-story house. I asked Boris the key, in my opinion, question:

- Construction 3D printing appeared in 2014, but no mass introduction of this technology followed in 7-8 years. Why do you think this happened, and why is there a surge of new projects right now?

- It seems to me that the reason is the snowball effect. The technology had to mature, grow from a hypothesis to a pilot implementation, and finally to commercialization and scaling (what is happening now). In addition, it should be borne in mind that construction is one of the most conservative industries, where, unlike even aviation and the automotive industry, there is still an extremely low introduction of digital solutions and automation in the field of the production process itself - the construction itself. The issue of regulation and certification also plays an important role - this process is long and creates an additional lag.

In 2014-2016 the first samples of building 3D printers and prototypes of printed buildings appeared. The concepts of various form factors of construction 3D printers and types of printing materials were tested.

In 2017-2018 in the world, the first notable investments were made in a number of construction 3D printing start-ups. Further, by 2020, these investments "rolled" in the form of reaching a certain level of technology maturity - the first commercial products (3D printers and houses) appeared.

Finally, in 2020-2022 it became clear that the hypotheses of the effectiveness of construction 3D printing were justified (cheaper, faster, more environmentally friendly), and large investments began in the industry. A striking example is the investment of GE (the French division of General Electric) in the Danish COBOD or the achievement of a capitalization of $ 2 billion by the American company ICON.

In 2022-2023 over 1,000 buildings will be printed worldwide already, scaling from single buildings/pilot projects to entire villages and major infrastructure/reinforced concrete implementations. In addition, in a number of countries, by now, a regulatory framework has been created or is being actively created for the introduction of additive technologies in the construction industry.

Thus, I believe that the specified time period is a fairly natural cycle of technology development, which is likely to experience exponential growth in the next decade.

According to ResearchAndMarket report, the global construction 3D printing market is valued at USD 354.3 million in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 11068.1 million by 2027, growing by 99.04%.

Various market processes affect the prices and behavior of participants in the global 3D construction printing market. They create price signals that are the result of changes in the demand and supply curves for a product or service. They can be associated with both macroeconomic and microeconomic factors. Even human emotions can also drive decisions, influence the market, and create price signals.

Now let's take a quick look at what the construction 3D printer is. Without delving too deeply into the technology, we can say that construction 3D printers are very similar to classic FDM/FFF printers that print with plastic, but instead of plastic, the material here is a cement mixture, which is fed directly into the nozzle and forms an object by layer-by-layer overlay. Printers are also portal, on the basis of a flying boom, with a robotic arm.

Pictured left is a construction printer based on a boom. The figure on the right is a gantry construction 3D printer

In the figure above, a construction 3D printer in the form of a robot arm installed on a mobile platform.

Everything changed completely when, in the summer of 2021, the American company ICON, which was trying to introduce 3D printing into the construction of various auxiliary facilities, signed a contract with one of the largest American developers, Lennar, to build a village of 100 houses in Texas and immediately became a unicorn , having received 200 million dollars of investments from several investment funds.

Pictured is a 3D printed house in Austin, Texas. A 3D printed house in Austin, Texas.

At the same time, the Danish company COBOD, created by the world's largest construction formwork company PERRI, began selling its gantry 3D construction printers and participating in construction projects around the world. In the photo below, a modern two-story house built in Germany and a school building in Malawi, built in record time with a minimal budget.

Few things unite developed, developing and poor countries, everywhere their problems and tasks, but Affordable housing shortage is a global agenda . If in poor countries there is an acute problem with the increase in the number of homeless people due to a lack of housing, as such, then in developing countries it is necessary to dramatically accelerate the number of new housing being built to meet the needs of a growing population. In developed countries, the problem is primarily in the cost of housing, which has risen in price to such an extent that it has become practically inaccessible to young people. And with the simultaneous increase in life expectancy in these countries, this problem is only getting worse.

At the same time, the trend towards "green agenda " is developing, reducing CO2 emissions, building with more environmentally friendly materials, etc. But, unfortunately, so far the construction industry is the absolute leader in CO2 emissions, as well as in the amount of garbage that each construction site leaves behind. This is not to say that construction 3D printing solves all these problems, but at least it is moving in the right direction. Let's look at this with a few illustrative examples.

3D printed walls.

Today, when we talk about 3D printing houses, we are talking about printing walls. Everything else (foundation, windows, doors, ceilings and roof) is done in the traditional way. 3D printed walls are built as fixed formwork, which significantly saves the amount of cement used , and this, in turn, reduces the cost of construction and reduces the environmental impact of cement production. In addition, with this method of construction, no additional waste is produced, the strength of the structure does not suffer. It can be reinforced, as shown in the photo on the left, and engineering communications can be immediately laid, as shown in the photo on the right, which also affects the final speed of the construction of the object. At the same time, the total weight of the structure is reduced, the remaining cavities can be filled with lightweight foam concrete, insulation, straw or any other available material. Such a lightweight design can use a lighter foundation. The construction method itself is more economical in terms of material, and therefore environmentally friendly.

Eco-concrete with the addition of polymers is being actively developed, the production of which reduces CO2 emissions from 30% to 100%. The Apis Cor company mentioned at the beginning of the article, which built a house in the suburbs in 2015, is now based in hot Florida, plans to start using this material in its projects.

Another startup from Russia, Mighty Buildings, headquartered in California, initially relied on a polymer with the addition of mineral chips. And while the company doesn't build entire homes, it only makes wall panels, it has won numerous design awards, as well as a $400 million valuation in several investment rounds.

As a result, with a rough calculation, we can say that the total savings on the construction of walls can reach 30%, and the total cost of the house can be reduced by 10%. This is true for houses designed for conventional construction. And if you initially design with 3D printing, you can improve this ratio by optimizing the laying of communications, the ability to immediately print interior walls, bookmark niches for bathrooms, fireplaces, built-in wardrobes and kitchens, as was done in the house built by COBOD in Germany.

"There are spots on the sun." Despite all the advantages of construction 3D printing, has several significant disadvantages of . The main one is layering, which cannot be avoided at the current level of technology development.

The photo above shows the layering of the 3D printed walls.

This task can be worked in several directions:

Ribbed walls can be plastered, painted and played with as a design element. That's how ICON does it in the US, for example their latest project House Zero is done that way and has won a number of design awards.

3D printed House Zero in the USA, built by ICON.

Use special "shutters" on the print head that allow smooth layers, as COBOD and other manufacturers do. The photo below shows that this does not ensure the complete absence of layering.

Fully sand the surface to get the usual smooth wall for plastering, painting, wallpapering or other finishing. It is possible, but it will require huge labor costs, which can reduce the overall efficiency of using 3D printing.

Pictured above is a 3D printed wall sanded smooth.

The second problem is the required temperature. Ideally, printing should take place at temperatures between +5C° and +30C°. Humidity is also important. Using additives, you can push these boundaries, but not indefinitely. At strong sub-zero temperatures, printing will be possible in the field only if the construction site is covered with a dome and the required temperature is reached inside with the help of heat guns. In conditions of intense heat, it is preferable to print at night. Another solution could be to print the wall panels in the shop and assemble them on site. Of course, each of these decisions will have a negative impact on the economic efficiency of the project.

Building 3D printing can be useful not only for the construction of houses . With its help, you can solve many other problems, and there its disadvantages will not matter. For example, the American concern GE uses COBOD printers to build towers for wind turbines in the shop. Ribbed surface and temperature restrictions in this case do not play any role. Construction takes place in the shop, after which the object is transported to the installation site.

3D printed wind tower. 3D printed wind tower.

Construction 3D printing, or, as it is also called, additive construction, has just appeared, and I want to believe in its bright future. There are many prerequisites for this, but a lot still needs to be done for success. First of all, it is necessary to develop principles for designing houses for building 3D printing. Then it is necessary to attract top architects to create landmark projects, which can be followed by the mass introduction of a new and very promising technology. Construction 3D printing could help solve the global housing shortage and bring more automation to other areas of construction.

Alexander Cornweitz

Expert in the field of additive technologies and 3D printing, Head of Tsvetnoy Mir

90,000 reports about construction 3D-printing in Russia

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Youtube channel "Low Rise Country" released a detailed story about AMT-Spetsavia, a leading Russian developer and manufacturer of construction 3D printers, based in Yaroslavl and successfully operating in the Russian and foreign markets. The narrator is the head of the enterprise Alexander Maslov.

In already completed projects, AMT-Spetsavia printed houses both on top of the foundation and in blocks in workshop conditions. In the video, Alexander clarifies this point, which is related, among other things, to weather conditions.

“If we print a prefab in the shop, then [the process] does not depend on weather conditions in any way. Both winter and summer are about the same temperature, which is good. When you print on a foundation (which everyone loves because it eliminates the assembly step, which is quite a lot of time and money), then of course the weather conditions come into play. The construction season is usually from spring to autumn. It's hard to print in very hot weather because the long, thin concrete walls start to crack. To do this, various additives are introduced into the concrete or the printing is transferred to a more convenient night time. Comfortable temperatures are from spring to autumn, from about 5°C to 25°C. Of course, precipitation and strong winds have a very strong influence - the structure still has windage, and there is a slight shift in the printed layers. Light rain is not a hindrance, in heavy rain the wet concrete will erode, so you need to keep an eye on the weather. As a rule, an hour and a half before the approach of a thunderstorm, we stop printing, wash the equipment and wait. There is another option to close it with some kind of canopy or a greenhouse, but it’s actually easier to miss two hours of printing than to fence the roof, ”said Alexander.

A 100 square meter 3D printed box takes thirty to thirty five hours to build. Fixed formwork is printed, which can be poured with foam compounds after one or several days, depending on the brand of concrete.

Alexander did not dare to give an exact figure, since the pace of work for each team is different, but in general, a small house can be built in about a month, including pouring the foundation and curing, 3D printing of formwork, inserting windows, doors, and so on.

According to Alexander, about forty companies are currently operating in the global market for 3D construction printing — some are engaged in the development and production of equipment, some directly in construction, some combine them. According to Alexander, AMT-Spetsavia accounts for 70% of the world production of construction 3D printers, with half of them going to Russian customers. In six years, the company has sold two hundred and forty pieces of equipment to sixteen countries.

AMT-Spetsavia produces portal 3D printers of two main types - workshop systems and larger options for outdoor work. The former are used in 3D printing of small architectural forms and building blocks, while the latter are installed on construction sites and print formwork directly on top of foundations.

The working area of such large-scale systems varies from one hundred and twenty square meters with the possibility of erecting two-story structures up to four hundred and twenty square meters. The latter can theoretically build buildings up to twenty-six stories high, although in practice such grandiose projects have not yet been implemented.

Details in the report of the channel "Low-Rise Country":