The construction technologies company ICON recently unveiled a welcome center for Community First! Village in Austin, a neighborhood housing homeless people, in partnership with Mobile Loaves & Fishes, the organization serving homless neighbors. The center, a 46 sqm space, was 3D printed thanks to a new printer, Vulcan II, that completes a building in few days. The welcome center, for example, has been built in less than 27 hours.

The aim is to build permanent housing for people coming out of chronicle homelessness, using the same method used for the center. Community First will be able to host 480 persons, representing about the 40 percent of the Austin’s population living in poverty. The building system uses robotics, advanced software and Lavacrete, a strong and lasting cementeous material tha reduces the cost of home construction and makes it faster through the 3D printing process.