Before Jason Ballard became an en-trepreneur, he considered becoming a priest. His speech is still peppered with the idiom of faith—wicked, angels, sacred—and, when he latches on to a subject he cares about, he assumes a rousing, propulsive cadence. These days, the topic he is most evangelical about is our broken housing system. “What we’re doing is not working,” Ballard told me last spring. “There are far too many homeless people. Working-class people can’t afford basic housing in regular old American cities. Construction’s too wasteful. Houses aren’t energy-efficient enough. At the suburb scale, it’s dystopian, almost, what we’re getting, right? We’re supposed to be the most advanced version of humanity that’s ever existed and we can’t even meet this basic need properly. And that means the housing of our future can’t—not shouldn’t, but can’t—be like the housing we have now.”
In 2017, Ballard co-founded Icon, a construction startup focussed on what he believes to be a solution to the housing crisis: 3-D-printed construction, a largely automated method that creates buildings layer by layer, typically with cement-based material. The company has offices in the Yard, a mixed-use development in a formerly industrial area of Austin, Texas. The Yard is currently home to a sake company, a winery, a brewery, a canned-cocktail company, a hard-seltzer manufacturer, a whiskey distillery, and a Tesla dealership. On the morning I visited, the air was thick with the sweet-sour smell of fermentation.
Denne historien er fra January 23, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra January 23, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
