Lesley Stahl: The first person in North America to live in a 3D-printed house was homeless. And he wanted to make sure that they were the first. He began pursuing that mission with Evan Loomis, a buddy from Texas A&M who had gone into finance.Įvan Loomis: As we looked at it, like, nobody had incorporated kinda the holy trinity of innovation to housing which was robotics, advanced materials, and software.Īlan Graham: People that live, that are in the economic strata, the men and women that we serve are gonna be the last people on the planet that are gonna benefit out of new technology. It made it more than a hobby or a business, right, that it sorta became a mission. Lesley Stahl: But that must've turned the switch for you. And if it doesn't work out, the church has been here for a long time. And- I said, "What do I do?" (laughs) And at the end, he said, "Jason, I want you to pursue this housing thing like this is your priesthood. And so I go to my bishop, the Bishop of Texas, Andy Doyle. Jason Ballard: -life is just putting housing in front of me, right as I've been, like, approved to go to seminary. And I have to go help my family pull drywall outta their house. Along the way, my hometown gets destroyed by a hurricane. And so now I'm thinking about homelessness and I'm working in sustainable building. I got involved in sustainable building, and I worked at the local homeless shelter. But along the way, I started just, like, getting this, like, itch about housing not being right. Jason Ballard: Yeah, I was almost an Episcopal priest. And I would certainly say, it is existentially urgent that we shelter ourselves without ruining the planet we have to live on. And on top of that, it's an ecological disaster. And, like, this is not the wor- like, we are not succeeding at something we have to get right. The result is these cookie cutter developments. The way you try to make it affordable is you trim quality on materials. Jason Ballard: 'Cause right now, it is too expensive, it falls over in a hurricane, it burns up in a fire, it gets eaten by termites. Lesley Stahl: But why do we need a big shift like that? He calls it a paradigm shift in how we construct our housing. Roofs, windows and insulation are added the old-fashioned way, by construction workers. (laughs)įor now, as Jason Ballard showed us, Icon is only 3D printing walls, with cutouts for plumbing and electricity. I think this'll be the highest selling house. I couldn't mess it up if i tried.Ĭonner Jenkins: I think that's the most gorgeous bead I've ever seen. Lesley Stahl: I'd be worried if I were you.īut turns out the path is entirely pre-programmed. A 3D printer squeezes out the concrete mixture for the houses. It's the brainchild of a 41-year-old Texan who's rarely without a cowboy hat, Jason Ballard. On this construction site, there's no hammering or sawing, just a nozzle squirting out concrete - kind of like an oversized soft serve ice cream dispenser - laying down the walls of a house one layer at a time. actually, the printing, of a 4-bedroom home. And if you believe Icon's mission-driven young founder, 3D printing could revolutionize how we build, help create affordable housing, even allow us, to. What virtually no one predicted, though, was that there might soon be 3D printers that could construct almost the entire house.īut that's just what a 6-year-old Austin, Texas company called Icon is doing. that each of our houses would have a 3D printer to make whatever items we need. There was a time when futurists were predicting that the advent of 3D printing was going to change our lives. 3D printing a 100-home community in Texas, and someday on the moon | 60 Minutes 22:27
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