ICON has started 3D printing its biggest commercial building yet, an exhibition and training center for a heavy equipment dealer in San Antonio.
The 12,649-square-foot building is for ASCO Equipment, which sells, rents and services heavy machinery for construction, agriculture, mining, energy and infrastructure customers in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. It will stand on ASCO’s San Antonio site, more than 60 acres used for equipment testing, operator training and sales events. ICON designed the building and is printing it with its Vulcan construction system. Printing began in November, and the building is slated for full completion in summer 2027.
What sets the design apart is how it splits the work between printed walls and steel. The curved printed walls wrap around the climate-controlled rooms where people gather, learn and work. A steel superstructure, using nearly 60 tons of steel, sits on top of and alongside those walls, which ICON calls a first-of-its-kind mixed structural system. So the machines get the large, open steel-framed hall, while the people stay in the printed parts.
That layout follows the building’s purpose, which is teaching and showing what the equipment can do. On one side of the training floor, 100 feet of overhead doors open onto ASCO’s demonstration field, so guests can watch machines work outside without leaving the building. Inside the printed enclosure, tiered seating faces the training floor, and an upstairs lounge looks out over the equipment below. A translucent facade wraps all 360 degrees of the building, letting in daylight while keeping the interior private, then glowing across the site after dark.
“ASCO wanted a special building to showcase their equipment, office, and hold events all in one place,” said Logan Grant, Division President of Design Build at ICON. “This project shows that our technology can deliver large-scale, high-performance commercial spaces.”
ASCO CEO Brax Wright sees the building as a stage for his customers, whom he calls the people who build, feed and fuel their communities. “We wanted a place where they can see what our equipment can do,” he said. “And we wanted to build it with a company that’s shifting the way we think about construction.”
It is also a first in two ways for ICON, as its first commercial project to fully integrate its design-build model and its first 3D printed building in San Antonio. ICON has built more than 270 homes and structures across five states and two countries. They include Wolf Ranch in Georgetown, Texas, a community of 3D printed homes built with Lennar, more than a hundred homes for people experiencing homelessness at Community First! Village in Austin, and military installations for the U.S. Army. ASCO, for its part, was founded by Bill Wright in Lubbock, Texas, in 1960 and now has 27 locations and more than 700 employees.
Source: ICON
