3D Printing ICONs Cosmic Pavilion (2024-08)¶

In March 2023, construction technologies company ICON partnered with The Long Center for the Performing Arts to design and construct the first 3D-printed performance pavilion in downtown Austin, called the Cosmic Pavilion. The pavilion demonstrates new design possibilities in large-scale cementitious additive manufacturing of structures using ICON’s Vulcan system. Designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the pavilion is an abstract shell geometry that merges two curvatures in concave and convex configurations to loft a wall in 3D-space. While small-scale polymer additive manufacturing demonstrates sufficient tension capacity across extruded filament bonds to resist cantilevering while printing— cementitious extrusion has little to no such tension capacity, which drives the classic limitation of lofted designs. However in the case of the Cosmic Pavilion, these limitations were mitigated through manipulating rheological properties of the cementitious material and executing a highly specific reinforcement strategy. The pavilion is an example of ICON’s continued work to advance shell geometries and realize greater cantilevered angles without using shoring or scaffolding. The final result is an undulating structure that pushes the bounds of unsupported cementitious 3D-printed cantilever limitations.