New Story and Icon came together to show that it’s feasibly possible to build an easy-to-replicate house in under 24 hours and plan to take this proof-of-concept and start producing small houses for families in countries like Haiti and El Salvador.

An 800-sq-ft house prototype house in Austin, Texas, cost around $10,000 to build using Icon’s proprietary Vulcan printer, but the company plans to eventually bring that price down to around $4,000.

“We feel it’s our responsibility to challenge traditional methods and work toward ending homelessness. Linear methods will never reach the billion+ people who need safe homes,” said Brett Hagler, CEO of New Story. “By working with ICON and leveraging their 3D printing innovations, we’re able to reach more families with the best possible shelter solutions, exponentially faster.”

“Conventional construction methods have many baked-in drawbacks and problems that we’ve taken for granted for so long that we forgot how to imagine any alternative,” says Jason Ballard, co-founder of ICON. “With 3D printing, you not only have a continuous thermal envelope, high thermal mass, and near zero-waste, but you also have speed, a much broader design palette, next-level resiliency, and the possibility of a quantum leap in affordability. This isn’t 10% better, it’s 10 times better.”

The portable printer is designed to function with near zero-waste and to work under unpredictable constraints (limited water, power, and labour infrastructure) to tackle housing shortages in underserved communities throughout the world. New Story’s goal for this project is to print the first community of homes for underserved families in El Salvador in the coming 18 months, and then through partnerships, scale up production to serve additional communities over the next few years. Housing will feature cutting-edge materials tested to the most recognised standards of safety, comfort and resiliency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvM7jFZGAec

More than just New Story using the technology to reach more families, the hope is that this catalytic R&D project that will influence the sector as a whole. Through the technology, the team will learn, iterate, and then share the technology with other nonprofits and governments to help everyone improve and reach families faster.

The high-powered innovators behind ICON and the first global initiative with New Story include a cross section of engineers, environmentalists, designers and entrepreneurs. ICON and New Story worked in close partnership with several other organisations to develop the Vulcan printer including Pump Studios, Yaskawa Electric, Alchemy Builders, TreeHouse, Andrew Logan Architecture, Linestar Automation and the University of Texas.