World’s First 3D-Printed Hotel Is Taking Shape In Texas |

3D printing technology and the hospitality industry are converging in a West Texas desert.

It’s being called the world’s first 3D-printed hotel by the project’s partners. An industrial-size 3D printer is extruding layer after layer of a concrete mixture to form the walls of the hotel’s first two model units in Marfa, Texas.

The plan is to expand El Cosmico, a 21-acre hotel and campground, by 40 extra acres to include 43 hotel units and 18 residential homes 3D-printed by ICON, an Austin, Texas-based 3D printing company.

El Cosmico owner and hotelier Liz Lambert said the technology allows for unbridled creativity in construction.

“I mean, most hotels are contained within four walls and a lot of times you are building the same unit over and over and over again,” Lambert said.

“I've never been able to build with such little constraint and such fluidity and just the curves and the domes and the parabolas. It's a crazy way to build.”

The 3D-printed buildings designed by firm Bjarke Ingels Group will incorporate domes, arches, vaults, and parabolic, or curved, walls – architectural features that would normally be too expensive to replicate on a large scale with traditional construction, according to Lambert.

The single-story, 12-foot (3.7-meter) walls of the first two units currently under construction – a three-bedroom residential space and single-room hotel unit – are printed by ICON’s Vulcan, a 46.5-feet (14.2 m) wide 3D printer standing 15.5-feet (4.7 m) and weighing 4.75 tons.

A print technician monitors Vulcan as its robotic arm and nozzle glide through the worksite on a gantry and via wheels on a chassis.

The "ink" of this 3D printer is a special cement-based material called Lavacrete, a proprietary mixture that the company closely guards, designed for strength and printability with resistance to weather elements. ICON CEO and founder Jason Ballard said workers are constantly adjusting and blending material ingredients based on weather conditions every 15 minutes or so.

“The magic happens in the admixtures that allow us to continue printing,” Ballard said. “This printer has now been running for something like 36 hours straight…so, the material behaves differently in different humidity and different temperatures and different levels of irradiance.”

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