Announcer> Support for "Reconnecting Roots" is provided by the following.

Muletown Coffee Roasters is all about slowing things down, digging into community, and encouraging good for goodness sake.

Taylor Stitch is responsibly built for the long haul and is proud to partner with brands that inspire hope for a more sustainable future.

Lems Shoes, everything we do is done with intention and we will never stop our endless exploration to keep your feet happy and healthy every step of the way.

Discover more with less.

The ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

Through the generosity of our members and donors, the ETV Endowment has made it possible for programs like "Reconnecting Roots" to be shared around our state and the nation for more than 45 years.

Sharing a common passion for music and community in beautiful Paradise Valley, Music Ranch Montana's mission to support musicians and provide a place to enjoy it together is reflected in "Reconnecting Roots."

(upbeat music: Mary Jane Girls "In My House") ♪ Gabe> It's a shelter from the storm for some and a castle for others.

So my next home could be a 3D printed home.

Jason> It sounds like science fiction, but we don't think so.

Gabe> How we reshape the homes we live in and change the shape of our lives.

Jason> Something about being on a path to own your home also puts you on a path to own your future.

♪ Gabe> Yet ever so humble, there's no place like home.

(song continues) ♪ In my house ♪ (intro music) Gabe> I'm Gabe McCauley.

Join me as we explore the greatness of America.

♪ Beautiful for spacious skies ♪ ♪ Amber waves of grain ♪ ♪ Purple mountain majesties on the fruited plain ♪ ♪ We're home ♪ ♪ There's no place like home ♪ ♪ ♪ Home ♪ ♪ Home ♪ Gabe> Tracing the roots of progress from then to now, and how, this is "Reconnecting Roots".

♪ We're home ♪ ("The Brady Bunch" Theme song) Here's a story of a TV icon.

It's the house seen in the classic sitcom, "The Brady Bunch," except that it isn't.

Well now it sort of is, I mean.

This is the house used for the exterior of the Brady home.

In reality, everything that happened on the show took place on a sound stage across town.

The make-believe Brady home is the definition of 1970's style... maybe a little too much.

Yet, it created a template dream home for a generation.

So when the actual house hit the market for the first time in 45 years, it sparked a bidding war, won by HGTV, who, with the help of several grown Brady kids, renovated the interior of the house to match the set design of the show, right down to its forward thinking kitchen, floating staircase, and Googie style stone and wood accents.

It's an extreme case of life imitating art and a prime example of how much time, energy, and value people will put into a house in order to make it a home.

(song ends) (gentle background music) Today, 70% of Americans still say owning a home is a hallmark of the American dream.

While home ownership rates have remained roughly the same since 1960, home sizes have not.

The average size of the American home is 2,657 square feet, more than double what it was 100 years ago.

♪ Our homes have become far more than just a shelter from the elements and often reflect our own personal style.

But as we change the types of homes we live in, our homes can also change how we live inside them.

Another change happening is with how homes are being built, or should I say, printed.

Nestled in the live music mecca of Austin, Texas is ICON, a company that has 3D printed more than 100 homes and is just getting started.

I wanted to see firsthand how these homes are made.

Co-founder and CTO, Alex Le Roux, guided me around their testing facility, showing off their one of a kind building process.

♪ What's it look like, start to finish, to build a 3D printed home?

Alex> So you're really going to start with selecting a design that you like.

We'll then send the printer to a construction site.

You set up the printer over the course of 24 to 48 hours and then we'll print the home in roughly seven days.

Gabe> So what's actually coming out of that machine right now?

Alex> Yeah, so this is our proprietary material, CarbonX, which is somewhat similar to concrete.

So it still has some cement, some aggregate, some sand, some water, but it's much lower carbon than most 3D printable mixes and it's actually 42% lower carbon than the previous mixes that we used.

Gabe> So besides more sustainable, what would be some other advantages for your average American?

You know, why should I get a 3D printed home?

Alex> I mean, one of the considerations is that if you live in a disaster prone area, a concrete built home, like one of these, is going to withstand the elements much better when we compare it to a stick frame house, which is going to be very prone to fire damage or very prone to the, the winds of hurricanes and tornadoes.

Gabe> What's the long term goal?

What's the vision for ICON?

Alex> Yeah, the vision and the mission of ICON is really to drive down the cost of construction and the goal, as longer term, robots and drones and software are doing the entire construction process, from design to construction to sales.

It sounds like science fiction, but we don't think so.

We think that world is actually just a couple years away.

Gabe> So my next home could be a 3D printed home.

Alex> Absolutely.

Gabe> So you were mentioning one of the biggest factors is cost, right?

It's everybody's biggest factor when they're building a home.

Alex> Exactly.

You can actually deliver a home for $34 per square foot, which is lower than the national average to build a wall system.

So that's a number that we're very proud of.

Gabe> I visited with co-founder and CEO, Jason Ballard, who explained how much human effort goes into creating machine made homes.

Jason> When you're in this 3D printed house right now, like, this was a home whose shape and form was given to us by a robot.

Does this home feel more or less human to you than the spec homes you usually see in developments in America?

Gabe> I would say probably more human.

Jason> Right!

Gabe> And I think it's just because of the level of intention that someone told a robot to perform.

Jason> For me, the curves and organic forms resonate somehow with the human spirit more than sort of rectangular boxes.

Gabe> Sure.

How does home ownership fit within the American dream?

Jason> Something about owning your own home or being on a path to own your own home also puts you on a path to own your future and to own your own life in a more sort of real and substantial way, the sort of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, right?

It's probably as good a short definition as I could come up with.

Gabe> What inspired ICON?

Jason> The global housing crisis is a very complicated thing, but the sort of point is, something very fundamental that every human on the planet needs.

We're really not doing this right.

And so the reason ICON started in some real sense is, it is existentially necessary for us to shelter ourselves with dignity and without ruining the planet if the future is going to be cool.

Gabe> Right.

Jason> Right?

It's like, you can imagine the flying cars, all the futuristic stuff you can imagine.

But if the housing isn't right, it's hard to believe that any of the rest of it could be right.

Gabe> Yeah.

Jason> It's hard ♪o believe.

(thunder crashing) (ominous music) ♪ (water running) (toilet flushes) Gabe> It's probably just old pipes.

(water running) This house is brimming with character.

(dramatic music) ♪ (clock chimes) ♪ Mandy> I wanted to downsize but you just had to have the haunted house, didn't you?

♪ (toilet flushes) (laughs) Alexei> When I built this old place, I could have never imagined an indoor outhouse.

Perhaps this could have helped me avoid the consumption.

(laughs and coughs) Sarah> Oh, Uncle Alexei.

Running water was quite the boon, but it was never hot.

(upbeat organ music) (water rushing) (Sarah laughs) Sarah> If any good came from Cousin Dougle inheriting this house, it was his gas lines.

Dougle> Gas lines are nice, Sarah, but anytime I wanted to read, it felt like someone was gaslighting me.

I might've kept my sanity with these lights.

♪ (laughs) Alexei> Every time some living soul moves into our house, they destroy something, but at least they leave behind these fun improvements.

(toilet flushes and ghosts laugh) (ominous music) (water running) ♪ Mandy> Nope.

(Gabe gulps) Gabe> Early American homes were constructed in a variety of different styles, reflecting the traditional houses of the European settlers.

Georgian and Federal homes, Cape Cod style, the New England Colonial, French Colonial, German Colonial, Spanish Colonial, Dutch Colonial, and many, many more Colonials, I'm sure.

Not everyone had the option of choosing a traditional building style.

Some were forced to go back to basics and work with what the land provided.

♪ On the prairie, where lumber was hard to get, homesteaders cut the dense sod into bricks to construct their homes.

But in wooded areas, settlers often built log cabins.

To meet demands for building homes as the nation expanded across the frontiers, the lumber industry standardized board cuts to simplify construction and shipping nationwide.

By some estimates, the value of timber harvested from the eastern US during this early housing boom surpasses all the gold mined during the California Gold Rush.

(song ends) (bright orchestral music) Today, suburbia is synonymous with the American dream, ♪ but neighborhoods and subdivisions have a rather peculiar origin story, one that's tied to corporate America.

The first large scale communities in America were referred to as company towns, which consisted of employee housing units and the local infrastructure to support them erected near a factory that the company would build.

But while the Pullman Company town ended with deadly riots, Hershey, Pennsylvania found the sweet spot.

(Willy Wonka theme song) The candy maker's vision for community was a world of pure imagination, complete with a wholesome environment, modern educational facilities, and affordable housing.

That vision is still thriving long after his passing.

The gold rush was also a housing rush and pre-fabricated houses shipped west with the miners.

By 1908, the Sears Modern Homes Catalog debuted, offering all the materials and blueprints needed to build a house.

The pieces that arrived in the mail were meant to fit together like a puzzle, so buyers could even build the houses themselves.

These classic homes are still highly valued.

I live in one now.

But by the 1940s, 57% of Americans had left the countryside to move into cities.

(music ends) (record reversing) ♪ ♪ Our house ♪ ♪ Is a very, very, very fine house ♪ ♪ With two cats in the yard ♪ ♪ Life used to be so hard ♪ ♪ Now everything is easy because of you ♪ ♪ ♪ Come to me now ♪ ♪ And rest your head for just five minutes ♪ ♪ Everything is done ♪ ♪ ♪ Such a cozy room ♪ ♪ Such a cozy room ♪ ♪ The windows are illuminated ♪ ♪ By the evening ♪ ♪ Sunshine through them ♪ ♪ Fiery gems ♪ ♪ For you ♪ ♪ Only for you ♪ ♪ ♪ Our house is a very, very, very fine house ♪ ♪ ♪ With two cats in the yard ♪ ♪ Life used to be so hard ♪ ♪ Now everything is easy cause of you ♪ ♪ ♪ And our ♪ ♪ La la ♪ ♪ La la la la ♪ ♪ La la la la ♪ ♪ La la la la la la ♪ ♪ La la la la la la la ♪ (song tempo slows) ♪ (chime) (saw whirring) Mandy> I still don't feel right about flipping this place.

The updates we're making don't even fit this house.

And are you sure that, that wall we're taking out isn't load bearing?

Alexei> Hmmmh!

Gabe> Probably.

(song ends) (hammer banging) (bright piano music) Dougle> Can anyone relax in peace with all this racket?

♪ This clatter is enough to wake the dead.

Sarah> You should know, Dougle.

Alexei> They are removing another wall!

Sarah> Curious habit of the living.

I remember when walls were all the rage.

♪ I wonder why they're so obsessed with tearing down perfectly useful walls.

Dougle> I admit...the open floor does create a sense of space.

Sarah> Oh, but they mustn't!

This is our forever home.

Dougle> And they're ruining it.

Come with me.

♪ (saw whirring) Gabe> Hey honey, can you hand me that tool over there?

Mandy> Yep.

I thought we agreed not to do the floating shelves.

Gabe> Yeah, we didn't.

I mean we did agree... (spooky music) Gabe> N-C?

Sarah> Do we not have enough boards to spell no?

♪ Alexei> There's a lumber shortage.

Dougle> Plan B: Go!

(wood clatters) (machine buzzing) (click) (soft oldies music) ♪ Someone's in the kitchen with... ♪ ♪ Someone's in the kitchen with... ♪ ♪ Someone's in the kitchen with... ♪ ♪ Someone's in the kitchen with... ♪ ♪ Someone's in the kitchen with... ♪ ♪ Mandy> I think they're trying to tell us something.

♪ Gabe> As the nation modernized, popular home styles changed to decadent, then elegant, and genius.

Frank Lloyd Wright focused on space, function, and materials to develop a distinctive American style that flourished with the case study program, which invited several architects to modernize home building with steel, concrete, and glass for the atomic age.

♪ Reporter> Two years ago, this was farmland and forest.

Levittown, now one of the 10 largest cities in Pennsylvania.

♪ Gabe> The post-war housing boom, fueled by inexpensive subsidized VA loans, eased the demand for affordable housing for returning veterans and their families.

What resulted was the modern subdivision, a neighborhood that wasn't built around a factory, but close enough to the city to find gainful employment and connect to utilities.

While the suburbs provided the tranquility of rural living and the resources available to cities, not everyone was allowed to purchase homes like these.

The Federal Housing Administration, a New Deal program, expanded home ownership dramatically, offering long-term low rate financing and low down payments.

To standardize the lending process, maps were created in cities to determine safe and risk zones, mostly along the lines of race.

The practice was known as redlining, which enshrined segregation and prevented many minority citizens from accessing guaranteed mortgages and building equity.

This led to a rise in predatory lending that destroyed the generational wealth traditional mortgages would've otherwise provided to residents in these areas.

While the FHA policy was abolished by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, many Black and minority neighborhoods continued to suffer its effects.

With the relative ease for White Americans to relocate to suburbia, AKA "White Flight", city centers began to deteriorate from lost revenues.

Public housing initiatives provided updated living standards while improving the blight left behind.

But efforts to revitalize urban areas mostly deepened segregation and created ghettos, as many businesses also left or sent jobs overseas.

Today, the factories that once attracted people to move into cities for work are attracting people as places to live, converted into chic lofts and condominiums, updating historic properties and reconnecting cultural city centers.

♪ We have so many options with how we curate our homes today.

And so we shape the homes we live in to some extent, but how do the homes we live in shape us?

Jason> All of us have been in buildings, whether it was a church or one of my favorite buildings on earth is Grand Central Station in New York City.

I feel like there is possibility.

I mean, I just feel enlivened when I'm in that space.

There are other buildings, and I won't name certain airports or fast food chains, where you're in there and it's like, it's easier to believe that life is meaningless, chaotic, and dark.

And so what are the subtle pressures on a civilization, on a culture?

The things we build are exerting back on us.

It's a very interesting question.

Gabe> Yeah.

Jason> And I think it's most pronounced in the building you spend the most time in, which is your home.

I think the housing, the shelter of our future, is going to be quite different than the housing we have known.

My whole work and effort is to make sure, by different, we mean more in line with human hopes, values, and aspirations.

Gabe> How do 3D printed homes address the needs across the entire housing sector?

Jason> Yeah, so in general, the advantages of 3D printing is we can build a higher quality home faster and more affordably with more design freedom.

So what happens when affordable housing can be beautiful?

You don't have to choose between beauty and cost.

I think it sort of supports us there.

I think for middle class, working class families, you can sort of express your own dignity.

You can get a better product at a lower cost.

And then of course at the very high end, what 3D printing enables is much more incredible experimentation with forms and architectural possibilities that when they get onto something, then sort of can trickle down through sort of the rest of the ecosystem.

So it really is a new way of building that will sort of raise the water level across the spectrum.

Gabe> No one knows the value of a house better than those who don't currently have one, which is why ICON has been long involved in projects, like the Community First Village, lending their 3D printing tech to create homes for those in need.

Jason> We have an existing paradigm, call it the two by four paradigm, and we use two by fours to shelter homeless people and we use two by fours to build the mansions of the wealthiest people in our society.

And we think we're sort of cutting in at that layer.

And so if we can improve the fundamental foundational way that we build, that it will have application to all kinds of, we're not sort of focused on a niche kind of housing, but the DNA of ICON has always been to focus those results as fast as we can on the very vulnerable and the very poor.

Gabe> So as you're dabbling with what the future of the American home could be, what are some things that need to remain unchanged?

Jason> Safety, comfort, and security are always going to be part of what it means to have a true home.

But then as you sort of elevate that, we don't just want our homes to shelter us.

We want them to speak to us in a funny way.

We want them to speak to us about the things that we most value and most believe.

Gabe> To inspire us?

Jason> Yeah.

All homes should shelter us.

The best homes should really reflect back to us the things that we hold most dear.

♪ Gabe as Employee> Okay, let me repeat your order.

You want the 5,000 square footer?

Cha-ching, infinity pool with high dive.

Cha-ching, two walk and jog closets.

Zig-a-zing!

And supersize the kitchen.

Cha, cha, cha, cha-ching!

All right, just skip the credit check, skip the down payment, and boom.

Only costs you an arm.

Thank you for choosing Prime Subs, drive on through.

In the early 2000s, Americans were buying homes like candy.

Reckless policies opened the door for greedy lenders and spendy buyers to use sub prime mortgages, which burst the economy in 2008.

The losses were devastating, especially for the millions who went into foreclosure.

Housing is a basic need.

It's not always cheap.

And the great recession proved the American dream can become quite costly.

♪ Gabe> A swanky downtown loft, a luxurious mountain cabin, or a Disney inspired villa.

Extravagant rental properties booked through property sharing sites are especially popular near big cities and tourist attractions.

Short-term rentals in these areas can be so profitable that many landlords convert their long-term rentals into opulent resorts for high paying tourists.

This so-called Airbnb effect can be a drain on the housing market for local renters while causing rents and sales prices to go up.

(gentle music) ♪ Gabe> There's no way we can flip this house.

It's really grown on me.

Ooh!

Mandy> If we do put this house on the market, we're going to have to play up the smart features.

Gabe> Mm, yeah.

Hey Sarah, lock the doors.

(silence) (lock clicks) Gabe> Okay, Dougle, make it cozy.

(air whistles) Mandy> Alexei, play "Our House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

(clapping) ♪ Our house In the middle of our street ♪ Mandy> That's not Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

♪ Our house ♪ Alexei> But it's still... our house.

(laughs) (ominous music) (thunder crashes) Gabe> We've come a long way from four walls and a roof.

And while the basic outline of a house hasn't changed all that much, the way we use our homes has transformed the way we live.

But as we all know, it's not what's inside a house that matters... as much as who's inside.

♪ Thanks for watching.

♪ You going to let me paint back here?

(upbeat folk music) ♪ ♪ Working on a building ♪ ♪ ♪ True foundation ♪ ♪ ♪ Brick by brick, we'll raise it up ♪ ♪ ♪ The building I'm building for my love ♪ ♪ ♪ Won't get tired ♪ ♪ ♪ Working on a building ♪ ♪ ♪ Home is all I'm thinking of ♪ ♪ ♪ The building I'm building for my love ♪ ♪ ♪ Working on a building ♪ ♪ (upbeat folk music continues) ♪ ♪ Working on a building ♪ (upbeat folk music adds drums) ♪ ♪ Working on a building ♪ (upbeat folk music continues) ♪ ♪ Working on a building ♪ ♪ (song ends) (soft folk music) ♪ Announcer> Connect with me, Gabe McCauley, and "Reconnecting Roots" by visiting reconnectingroots.com where you'll find music, blogs, behind the scenes, and more.

Join our email list to stay reconnected.

(song ends) Announcer> Support for "Reconnecting Roots" is provided by the following.

Muletown Coffee Roasters is all about slowing things down, digging into community, and encouraging good for goodness sake.

♪ Taylor Stitch is responsibly built for the long haul and is proud to partner with brands that inspire hope for a more sustainable future.

♪ Lems Shoes, everything we do is done with intention and we will never stop our endless exploration to keep your feet happy and healthy every step of the way.

Discover more with less.

The ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

Through the generosity of our members and donors, the ETV Endowment has made it possible for programs like "Reconnecting Roots" to be shared around our state and the nation for more than 45 years.

♪ Sharing a common passion for music and community in beautiful Paradise Valley, Music Ranch Montana's mission to support musicians and provide a place to enjoy it together is reflected in "Reconnecting Roots."

♪ (bright music) (APT chime)