El Cosmico, a hotel and campground site in Marfa, Texas — about an eight-hour drive from Dallas — is building two model units using a giant 3D printer. These examples will form the basis of the site’s 40-acre expansion, including 43 rooms and 18 residences, all built using ICON’s Vulcan 3D printer. While many buildings have already been built using 3D printing techniques, Reuters says these structures would be the first to be deployed in the hospitality setting.
“Most hotels are contained within four walls and a lot of times you are building the same unit over and over and over again,” El Cosmico owner Liz Lambert told Reuters. “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.”
