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ICON, the company that has been given nearly $60 million and tasked by NASA to create homes and habitats on the Moon and Mars, is using the same 3D technology to build one-story residences in a master-planned community in the Texas Hill Country — with pricing starting in the mid-$400,000s.

Reservations for the 100 homes are going live shortly, with the first move-ins expected later this year.

Seven of ICON’s 3D robotic printers are now squeezing out the material for the walls of the houses near Austin, Texas that were designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and being developed by Lennar — one of the nation’s largest homebuilders.

BIG is often involved in cutting-edge architecture, such as its sail-like rental apartment building for Durst at Via 57 West in New York City — plus it also designed NASA’s Moon and Mars habitats.

The homes in Texas are situated within Wolf Ranch, a master-planned community by the Perot company’s Hillwood Communities.

Located near the San Gabriel River just west of I-35 in the suburb of Georgetown, large tracts of Wolf Ranch are already filled with couples and kids in homes developed by a flurry of nationwide builders that include Coventry, Drees, Highland and Perry — plus another neighborhood built by Lennar.

Georgetown, for its part, is a charming, historic city of 75,000-plus people where “Friday Night Lights” and “Dazed and Confused” were filmed, and now operates on 100% renewable energy. Those who live here are on board with its governance — one local brewery uses 100% wind power for its beers.

The tract where Lennar and ICON are busy printing and completing the homes is on the eastern side of Wolf Ranch Parkway, in an area known as the South Fork.

An additional clubhouse and swimming pool are being developed by Hillwood nearby, while the community’s original amenities center, The Den, is in the Hilltop area to the north. An overarching homeowner association is responsible for dues that include the amenities and alarm monitoring.

Not only will the single-family Lennar ranch-style dwellings have thick 3D-printed walls, but they’ll also be outfitted with a Sunnova solar system.

Pricing for all the Wolf Ranch homes generally ranges from the mid-$400,000s to north of $1 million, although some price tags were slashed last fall as interest rates rose to combat languishing inflation.

But it’s the faster and cheaper construction promised by 3D robotics — walls can go up within days — and the ability to add the heavy and harder-to-transport water on site, that has attracted proponents and investors who also see it as an ideal affordable home-construction solution.

In announcing its 3D home project last fall, Lennar’s executive chairman Stuart Miller said, “We are very pleased to partner with ICON and BIG in building a first-of-its-kind, printed home community that combines innovative designs with sustainable features at an affordable price. Given the housing shortage that persists across the country, it has never been more important to innovate in order to find new methods of construction that will enable greater design flexibility and greater production at affordable prices.”

Now valued at more than $2 billion, ICON uses its proprietary 3D printer “Vulcan,” and a proprietary concrete formulation dubbed “Lavacrete.”

Just as your personal printer cartridges move back and forth on a track spraying out ink, the Vulcan’s nozzle moves across a long, customizable rail attached to its giant gantries — at Wolf Ranch it’s 38 feet across and creates walls 10 feet high — while squeezing out a toothpaste-like column of continuous grey spaghetti, laying each row of Lavacrete on top of the one before.

The concrete formula is mixed in the attached “Magma” machine. But to ensure the Lavacrete hardens at a certain rate — so it can both support the next layer, but won’t collapse — it must be changed with the weather and is adjusted on the fly at the jobsite.

The exceedingly strong material, which ICON claims exceeds strength requirements by 350%, was designed to withstand extreme weather — Texas gets ice storms and hurricanes — and is water-, mold-, termite- and fire-resistant. Already, its homes have survived 250 mph wind tests and a 7.4-magnitude earthquake in Mexico.

Although the “normal” dingy gray color of concrete is not always cosmetically appealing, the powder can be altered so it appears lighter and whiter. All of the homes at Wolf Ranch will have white interiors, while the exteriors will be shades of grey.

While some critics say the most difficult part of 3D building is getting windows and doors to properly fit, Lennar’s trade heads, BIG architects and ICON experts collaborated on smoother installation solutions for Wolf Ranch.

Lennar does site prep and pours the concrete slab foundation so ICON can print the walls and cut out spots for plumbing and electrical boxes. Then Lennar’s other trades return and install all the mechanicals and roof which then gets its solar panels.

Although it’s easy to imagine 3D-printed homes would resemble the “Little Boxes” suggested in Pete Seeger’s ode to cookie-cutter homes with its chorus, “And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky / And they all look just the same” — that won’t be the case at Wolf Ranch.

That’s because the new houses can be customized using eight different plans and 24 configurations with either three or four bedrooms, and two or three baths, and will range in size from 1,574 to 2,112 square feet.

ICON is also printing kitchen islands and outdoor planters, while some homes will also have a printed credenza.

Lennar, which invested in ICON’s Series B funding round last fall through its LenX division, will also include its Connected Home package that consists of a Ring Video Doorbell Pro, a Schlage Encode Smart WiFi deadbolt and a Honeywell Home T6 Pro WiFi smart thermostat.

“For the first time in the history of the world, what we’re witnessing here is a fleet of robots building an entire community of homes. And not just any homes, homes that are better in every way … better design, higher strength, higher energy performance and comfort, and increased resiliency,” said ICON co-founder Jason Ballard last fall. “In the future, I believe robots and drones will build entire neighborhoods, towns, and cities, and we’ll look back at Lennar’s Wolf Ranch community as the place where robotic construction at scale began. We still have a long way to go, but I believe this marks a very exciting and hopeful turn in the way we address housing issues in the world.”

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