An Austin church needs a new building. It's going to print it
Christianity Today
July 22, 2026
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ICON and Overland Partners
In a closet of the chapel of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas, is a box of abandoned plans. Decades’ worth of blueprints, mockups, and hopes for a new building sit untouched.
Originally constructed in 1959, the structure has limped along for at least the last 30 years. The main nave comprises remnants from older construction projects that have not aged well. The building’s foundation rests on old telephone poles that are rotting into the ground. The roofs leak. Asbestos hides under every carpeted surface. Reverend Zac Koons occasionally hears a raccoon skittering in his office ceiling.
Koons, the church’s rector, came to St. Mark’s in 2018 and became painfully aware of the need. By 2021, the congregation finally had a plan for a new building. But construction costs were soaring—they would need to raise $8 million. And Koons recognized a cardinal sin in the plan: It was boring. Consultants projected they would be able to raise only a fraction of what they needed.
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“They gave us a design, and everybody’s like, ‘This is so boring,’” Koons said. “How are we going to raise $8 million for something so boring?”
Plans stalled. Years passed.
Then, in 2023, Koons was in the chapel when he received a call from Overland Partners architect Rick Archer, who had been working with the church on a new building. He was raving about a demo he’d seen at a recent convention: A construction company could 3D print walls up to 30 feet high. “We could build a church with this thing!” Koons recalls Archer saying.
Among other advantages, a printed building promised to be cheaper than a conventional one. It would also be more durable and require less maintenance. Koons was intrigued by the idea of a building that seemed to look not two decades ahead, but two centuries.
“I don’t think any pastor dreams of being a fundraiser or dreams of running capital campaigns one day, and then all of us inherit these ancient, decrepit buildings that we have to find ways to take care of,” Koons said. “When 3D printing became part of the conversation … it became so much more interesting to me.”
It also became more interesting to the congregation, which sees between 200 and 250 attendees every Sunday. The church has surpassed its $8 million fundraising goal.
Now, Koons and the St. Mark’s team are looking even further ahead, thinking about how to replace other buildings on their seven-structure campus as they plan to build the first 3D printed church in the United States and maybe the world.
Jason Ballard, a parishioner at St. Mark’s, once thought he’d go to seminary and become a pastor. Instead he found himself working in eco-conscious construction, founding TreeHouse, an environmentally friendly home improvement store.
The company closed in 2018, and Ballard moved on to found Icon, a high-tech construction company focused on 3D printed buildings.
Icon builds structures by using a robot crane arm to deposit a concrete mixture in tiny layers that add up to form walls. Ballard said the resulting buildings are ecologically friendly, nontoxic, and fire and flood resistant, and they surpass strength code by 300 percent. He hopes Icon can eventually provide state-of-the-art homes for the wealthy and poor alike.
Despite being at St. Mark’s for years and having advised on earlier building plans, Ballard hesitated to approach Koons or the St. Mark’s team about 3D printing his own church. Inserting himself into the conversation felt out of place.
“I didn’t want to just think of it as, like, a sales opportunity or whatever,” Ballard told CT. “It ended up being important for me to be comfortable that Zac and the congregation got there on their own without any kind of steering from me.”
When Koons and architect Rick Archer expressed interest, Ballard invited them to a test 3D construction project in Austin showcasing the potential of the new tech. Curved and elegant walls, large windows, and an open floor plan put the full construction potential in front of Koons and Archer.
When Ballard presented the project to the St. Mark’s congregation in June 2024, he sat in the middle of the main aisle of the church, propped on a stool in a button-down shirt and blue jeans, cowboy hat in hand, speaking casually about the tech and his background.
“Not only can we execute this project but … we can do this project in such a way that it is a signpost to the eternal beauty, goodness, and generosity of God and of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ in our world,” Ballard says in a video recording of the presentation.
Ballard claims Icon can put up a building at 40 percent of the cost of standard construction. The company has drawn national attention—making hurricane-proof homes on the Gulf Coast, printing permanent homes for the homeless, and building a shelter with NASA to test living on Mars.
“I hope, and by God’s mercy and grace, my whole life and work is a working out of the profound mystery revealed in Jesus Christ and how that transforms our lives and transforms our world,” Ballard told CT. “I hope perhaps the technology can catalyze a renaissance of sacred architecture and contribute to the visible truth, goodness, and beauty in the world.”
During his presentation at St. Mark’s, Ballard told the church he believed the building could become a destination. “I think people will come to Austin, and coming by here to pray will be on their agenda.”
Since uniting on the project, Koons, Ballard, and Archer have worked together closely. All three speak highly of each other.
Archer, an Anglican from San Antonio who has worked as an architect since the ’70s, saw the possibilities of the new tech vividly. Churches have been patrons of architectural advancement throughout history, developing the arch, the vault, the flying buttress. With a printed building, Archer could create shapes that he couldn’t with conventional construction.
“We’ve got a technology that’s proven, but it’s never been proven at this scale at this height,” Archer told CT. “We know that we’re entering into territory where we’re solving problems as we go, and that’s thrilling and frightening at the same time.”
St. Mark’s design for the new building is inspired by Fra Angelico’s early Renaissance painting of the Annunciation, portraying the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary to tell her she is pregnant with Christ.
The church’s floor plan shows an oval outline, with a altar in the center and rows of pews radiating outward, representing a womb with Christ at the center. Koons said the plan is to insert behind the altar a tall sliver of a window fitted with gold-colored glass to cast a glow over the congregants reminiscent of the painting.
The new church building is nearly all curves, white and smooth walls, and intricate glass. A hook of wall circles the entrance, with a garden representing Eden and a common space connecting the building to Austin’s urban trail network. The building also evokes a nautilus, a fossilized shell found in the ground around St. Mark’s site.
Archer said he wants the building, like the painting, to draw people into the biblical redemption story intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. “Fra Angelico really told, in many ways, the whole story of the gospel in one painting,” Archer said.
Through the project the team has been collaborating with Amanda Iglesias, an architect serving as the team’s sacred space adviser—someone who integrates the architectural design with a spiritual message.
Iglesias works on inspirations for the building, like the Annunciation, as well as practical considerations, like the spatial needs of an Episcopal service, which involves a lot of movement and, in some cases, elements like fire.
“Children hold torches,” Iglesias said. “There’s water, there’s fire, there’s incense, there’s kneeling, there’s bread, there’s wine. … The real thing matters. It is not just representative.”
Iglesias said that while dreaming up the space has been exhilarating, there is also a weight to making a project that will likely last beyond her or anyone else on the team.
“This is our generation’s one attempt for St. Mark’s Austin,” Iglesias said. “What are we going to do with the tools that we have?”
St. Mark’s wants to break ground in 2027. Koons said the church could only happen in Austin, with its “Wild West” culture of tech entrepreneurs. An aborted print in California underscores his point.
In 2022, Lake California Community Church made headlines when it announced plans to construct the first 3D printed church building. Adorned with a giant cross, the structure was to feature a glass main entrance and a simple sanctuary.
Don Ajamian was going to build the church. Ajamian, CEO of Emergent, is one of the construction industry’s early adopters of 3D printing. He founded his company in 2019 to rebuild parts of Northern California after wildfires devastated communities there.
Ajamian’s technology is similar to Icon’s, printing by layering concrete into walls. What’s dissimilar are the building codes in California and Texas. In California, the state required Lake California Community to add extras like rebar, support beams, and insulation—things Ajamian deems “enormously expensive” and unnecessary for a 3D printed church.
Regulators are still sizing up the risks of the technology. Some early printed buildings have had cracks and foundation issues, often the result of improperly made concrete mixtures. A housing site in Muscatine, Iowa, had to tear down multiple structures in 2023 after the concrete did not properly set.
After drafting church plans with Lake California Community Church, Ajamian and his team realized that with all the code-friendly add-ons, the building would be more expensive as a 3D print. The church opted for the conventional build.
The church held its first service in the new space in 2024. Ajamian said while it was exciting to work on the church—his company still built the more traditional version—he understands that regulations are still catching up with the emerging tech.
“When enough testing has been done and the code catches up, then we’ll start really seeing the price come down to build this way,” Ajamian told CT.
Meanwhile, as builders who are bearish on printing wait for those changes, a Catholic church in the Czech Republic could beat St. Mark’s to becoming the world’s first 3D printed church. It broke ground at the beginning of this year.
Holy Trinity Church in Neratovice will be built of 520 printed blocks, assembled like a puzzle, to make an ark-like structure designed by Czech architect Zdeňek Fránek. It will be the first church building in the town, which was founded in 1957 by Communists.
The St. Mark’s team said it does not matter if they are the first team to make a 3D printed church.
“That, to me, is less exciting than being a part of a much larger cosmic story,” Iglesias said. “We’re not trying to rush the process and finish first. It’s about making sure we’re doing this well.”
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