3D Printing Homes with ICON Co-Founder Jason Ballard

Providing homes for those in need while doing so sustainably is a double-edged sword. But it’s one Jason Ballard, co-founder of ICON, wields valiantly and innovatively. With a goal to get everyone in need into a dignified home, Jason thought outside the box — why not have homes be 3D printed, with sustainable and durable materials? That thought, and the need for more housing, is what led to ICON. A company dedicated to providing homes for all in need in a responsible way. Jason was kind enough to spend some time with The Flow Trip to talk about all things housing, robots, sustainability, and how he’s (literally) shooting for the moon. 

 

How did you decide to go into sustainable building? How does one get into this line of business?

Jason Ballard: Long before ICON, I studied conservation biology at university and then went on to work in sustainable building and sustainable materials. I kept seeing the same problem: We were trying to make an outdated, wasteful construction system a little less harmful. I realized the real answer was to reinvent the system itself. ICON was born from that conviction. We could build homes faster, stronger, more sustainably, and for far more people.

 

 

What is ICON’s mission and overall goal?

JB: The mission of ICON is to create a world where everyone has access to dignified shelter. We plan to do this by creating intelligent machines that are capable of building that future. It is our sincere belief that the combination of robots, software, and advanced materials is the only combination that can achieve lower cost and higher speeds without sacrificing beauty, safety, comfort, and sustainability. The shelter of our future must be different from the shelter we have known. 

What challenges faced by the world today inspired you to jumpstart ICON?

JB: ICON was sort of evoked into existence. We emerged in response to an overwhelming need for housing solutions and a new way to build more resiliently, more sustainably, faster, and with fewer materials and labor.

Millions of dignified homes must be built. That’s what it will take to make a significant impact on the global housing crisis within our lifetime. Around the world, more than a billion people still lack access to safe, dignified, and affordable housing, and today, we are not solving this problem fast enough. Traditional construction is slow, expensive, resource-intensive, and fundamentally unsuited to the scale of the need. If we want to build a better future, we must radically rethink how we build.

 

 

What is one thing humans can bring to the process of building houses that machines can’t? 

JB: I think technology is the tool, and humanity is the author. Machines can build with speed and precision, but only humans bring vision and empathy. You might say that humans bring a sense of purpose that a machine cannot bring. We are using machines to build a more human world, not the other way around.

 

What does home mean to you?

JB: Home is far more than a structure. It’s the foundation for human flourishing. It’s where people gather, dream, raise families, and shape their futures. When we talk about solving the global housing crisis, we’re not talking about simply producing more buildings. We’re talking about ensuring that every human being has access to a resilient, beautiful, and sustainable place to belong.

A home is not simply the materials it is made of, though it can never be less than that. A home, as opposed to a building, is a stronger and deeper idea, and is carried in the heart of a person. It is a sacredness that is attached to a particular place and a specific structure. It is difficult (though not impossible) to achieve the sense of “home” in something shoddily constructed with no deeper intention. But by building long-lasting houses of beauty and purpose, I believe we can make it more likely that the sense of “home” is achieved.

 

 

What’s your favorite project you’ve done so far, and why? 

JB: Community First! Village. This is a 51-acre, masterplanned community built to lift the chronically homeless up off the streets and into a place they can call home. It is one of the most innovative communities in the world. We have been fortunate enough to be able to build 60 homes to date and have 60 more underway right now. This is why ICON exists.

The impoverished are some of the last to benefit from advancements in technology. To know that our technology in its first few years and now nearly a decade later can deliver hundreds of dignified homes for those in dire need is a blessing. I personally look forward to the thousands of ICON intelligent machines building millions of homes in my lifetime.

 

"The shelter or our future must be different from the shelter we have known."

 

Let’s go back in time — Legos or Lincoln Logs?

JB: I’ve got to go with Legos. Lincoln Logs are great, but Legos let you imagine anything, including entire worlds, impossible shapes, and structures that don’t exist yet. It is open-ended creativity.

To Marfa, Mexico, and the Moon

Marfa, Texas

What made you choose Marfa?

JB: It was chosen by our partner there, Liz Lambert. West Texas is her home, and this is a real passion project for her. She is one of the greatest creatives the state of Texas has ever produced — truly the “Queen of Cool,” and it is a huge honor to work with her. 

That said, far West Texas has long been one of the most important and inspiring landscapes for me and for my family. Its wildness, emptiness, quietness, simplicity, and remoteness make it a pretty special place for me and many others… It’s something we don’t get to be in contact with very often in the modern world.

 

 

Explain how you took inspiration from the desert and nature and incorporated it into the architecture? 

JB: I think the main places that inspiration from the desert and nature appears are in the minimalism of the design, combined with the colors we chose to print with, as well as the striations included in the print to make it look geological. We didn’t want what we built to be overly assertive, but almost like it grew out of the landscape.

 

"We didn't want what we built to be overly assertive. But almost like it grew out of the landscape."

What aspects did BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) bring to the project, and how did this elevate the final result? 

JB: Bjarke is one of the greatest architects of our time. He has this rare ability to dream at the scale of myth while still designing something that can actually be built. For El Cosmico, the team at BIG created a vision that feels both otherworldly and deeply connected to the spirit of Marfa. The designs of the hotel, private residences, and more feature organic curves, a primordial architectural language that can only be achieved by 3D printing.

 

Nacajuca, Mexico 

What was the motive for this project? 

JB: The housing nonprofit New Story was ICON’s first client before we even launched the company publicly. New Story is dedicated to finding stronger, quicker, and cheaper ways to address global homelessness and has delivered homes in remote places in Haiti, El Salvador, Bolivia, and Mexico, serving more than 15,000 people. 

For low-income families in Nacajuca, the lack of adequate, affordable housing is exacerbated by seismic activity and flooding. Traditionally, the process of building a house in Mexico is a slow and expensive approach to tackling the widespread issue of inadequate housing.

Delivering the first 3D-printed homes to families living in extreme poverty was a profound moment for us. It proved that this technology isn’t just futuristic… it’s transformational. Seeing families move into dignified, resilient homes printed in a fraction of the time reaffirmed why we’re doing this work. If we can build safe, beautiful, affordable housing for those who need it most, then we can build it anywhere. It was a glimpse of a future where robotics and advanced construction don’t just create efficiency, they create opportunity, stability, and hope.

 

 

How did you adapt the housing structures to ensure they would last beyond our time?

JB: For communities facing earthquakes, wildfires, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, this level of performance isn’t optional — it is essential.

Building in a seismic zone meant we had to prove, not just claim, the resilience of our 3D-printed structures. ICON has invested as much, if not more, in rigorous testing of our systems, materials, and processes as we have in developing the technology itself. Ensuring our homes can withstand natural disasters is core to our mission.

 

The Moon

How did your partnership with NASA start? How did you quite literally take your idea to the moon?

JB: Since its founding, ICON has been thinking about off-world construction and its natural progression around the ways additive construction and 3D printing can create a better future for humanity.

 

 

Building humanity’s first home on another world will be one of the most ambitious construction projects in recorded human history and push technology, engineering, science, and architecture to literal new heights. NASA’s investment in space-age technologies like this can not only help to advance humanity’s future in space, but also to solve very real, vexing problems we face on Earth.

NASA has signaled that, through the Artemis program, the moon will be the first off-Earth site for sustainable surface exploration. Building a sustainable presence on the moon requires more than rockets. For a permanent lunar presence to exist, robust structures will need to be built on the moon that provide better thermal, radiation, and micrometeorite protection than metal or inflatable habitats can provide. In our development, we are following a “live off the land” approach by prioritizing the use of in-situ/native materials found on the Moon. From landing pads to habitats, these collective efforts are driven by the need to make humanity a spacefaring civilization.

 

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