ICON partnered with the non-profit New Story to build the first permitted, 3D-printed home in America. The home was unveiled in March 2018 in Austin, TX and was built using a prototype of the mobile printer we are creating for New Story and the developing world. The production version of the printer will have the ability to print a single story, 600-800 square foot home in under 24 hours for less than $4,000. As a part of this effort, ICON has developed cutting-edge materials tested to the most recognized standards of safety, comfort and resiliency and is designed to function with nearly zero waste production methods and work under unpredictable constraints (limited water, power, and labor infrastructure) to tackle housing shortages. Learn more: New Story: https://bit.ly/2FLBIn8 ICON: https://bit.ly/2pj0jJ7 A new era in construction technology. History has been punctuated with advances in technology and materials that provide an order-of-magnitude decrease in cost and time required to build a new home. And while recent decades have brought major advances in personal technology, construction practices remain relatively unchanged since the 1950s. ICON aims to change this, ushering in a new era in construction to meet the needs of the future. 1200S Middle Ages Early standardization of carpentry and architecture techniques. 1880S Industrial Revolution Climate control and industrial production of building materials. 1950S Power Revolution Power tools and new materials enable homes to be built 10x as fast with reduced costs. The future. 3D Printing Advancements in robotics, software, and materials allow for large homes to be printed. Revolutionizing homebuilding. We are a construction technologies company leading the way into the future of homebuilding by using 3D printing to make major advancements in affordability, building performance, sustainability and customizability. Through advanced robotics and cutting-edge materials, we are able to provide sustainable solutions to a number of our world’s most pressing issues, including the pandemic of homelessness in the developing world, the difficulty of constructing off-planet space habitats, and the exorbitant cost of customized housing. PERFORMANCE Zero energy, thermally efficient, and comfortable. AFFORDABILITY The goal is to make housing more affordable for everyone. AESTHETICS With an open design platform, the possibilities are endless for what can be printed. You dream it, we print it. New Story is building a world where all families live in safe, thriving communities. New Story is a Y Combinator-backed nonprofit that uses technology and innovative processes to build holistic communities in the developing world that include components like a school, clean water, and income opportunities. There are 1B+ people without safe shelter globally New Story has a track record of changing lives and communities one at a time, but it will take decades to even make a dent in this problem given it’s magnitude. 3d-printed construction could cut construction time and cost in half, dramatically accelerating the work New Story is doing around the world. A new level of collaboration. For home and community initiatives to be successful, they must be designed with the input of the people who will be living in them. This is called participatory design. ICON technology enables unprecedented design collaboration and customization for New Story initiatives, increasing community buy-in. Local labor will also operate the machines, creating new advanced manufacturing jobs.

Hello, Welcome to NeoScribe. Technology has drastically changed our lives over the years. Books, movies, and music have become digitalized. Cars are becoming computerized. Smartphones we carry in our pocket are more powerful than supercomputers from the mid 90’s. However, there’s one major aspect that has largely remained the same. And that is housing. But that will all change with the advent of 3D printing, which will allow houses to be constructed in a fraction of the time AND cost compared to current construction methods. The best way to illustrate this is to cover a few of the many companies springing up around the world working hard to implement the technology. Starting with Apis Cor. Apis Cor is based out of Russia and they made headlines in 2017 when they Printed a house in Stupino Russia in just 24 hours! The house is made out of a concrete mixture that lasts for 175 years. And they accomplished this using an incredible Apis Cor Mobile 3D printer that can be transported to the construction site. The printer has a stabilization system allowing it to operate without attaching it to anything. Set up only takes 30 minutes and only takes two people to operate. It has a printing zone 132 square meters and in order to build larger structures, you simply move the printer elsewhere on the construction site or you can have two or more printers synchronized with each other. The companies eventually want to be able to cut the cost of construction to a point where the tiny house they built in Russia would cost around $10,000 including windows, doors, electrical wiring, plumbing, and other bare necessities. The prototype house has a unique design on purpose to showcase the flexibility of 3D printed houses. With 3D printing, houses will not be limited to rectangular shapes, they will be able to be any shape. On top of that, houses will be able to be printed from a variety of materials. And this takes us to WASP. WASP is a 3D printing company based out of Italy, and they recently completed a project called Gaia. Gaia is a tiny house constructed at a cost of just $1000 using a modular printing system called the Crane Wasp. The system consists of the main printer unit that can be assembled in different configurations allowing for the construction of larger structures. While the system can print structures out of concrete and geopolymers, it can also print from materials found right on the construction site. The foundation is made out of concrete and the roof out of timber but the 3D printed walls are made out of 25% of soil taken from the site, 40% from straw chopped rice, 25% rice husk and 10% hydraulic lime mixed in a wet pan mill. For a house largely made out of dirt, the inside looks considerably sleek and cozy. This demonstrates how useful and economic 3D printing can be for creating shelters for disaster relief. Or anyone else who needs a quick crash pad for the cost of an iPhone. So 3D printed construction will be fast and cheap, but when and where will we start seeing people live in 3D printed homes? The answer is, 2019, in the Netherlands who could use automated construction methods as the country has a shortage of bricklayers causing high construction costs. This is something that the construction company Van Wijnen hopes to solve. They are working with the city of Eindhoven to build the world’s first community of 3D-printed houses. The community will consist of 5 houses printed out of concrete. And each house will have a progressively more complex architecture than the one before it building off what the team learned from each one. The company is approaching the project as if it was a sculpture garden with a futuristic aesthetic. Based on these renderings, the project is going to look incredible once completed and I can’t wait to see it! And it appears the locals are excited as well since the waitlist has 20 people for the first house alone. Hopefully the project will be successful and hopefully, we will start seeing other projects like this around the world. As it stands now, it appears housing will finally catch up to the rest of the amazing technology in our lives. Alright, that’s all I have for now. I hope you enjoyed your journey, if you did, please leave a like and subscribe. I am NeoScribe and I’ll see you on the next journey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2cXsvlc8M8

INGENIOUS CONSTRUCTION WORKERS THAT ARE ON ANOTHER LEVEL

Published on Apr 14, 2019

An overview of my rain collection system used for drinking and showering.