TOANO— Building on a national legacy of innovation in affordable housing, Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg is expanding its homebuilding toolkit with a construction approach that combines insulated concrete forms, 3D-printed exterior wall panels and prefabricated interior wall framing in a single home.
The new home, now under construction in Toano, will be a 1,050-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bathroom Habitat home. Its foundation is being built using insulated concrete forms, while the exterior walls are being 3D-printed as concrete panels. Interior wood-framed walls are being prefabricated using a method developed by Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg that is now taught to other Habitat affiliates across Virginia.
While the local affiliate has successfully used each of these construction methods independently, this project marks the first Habitat home in the nation to combine all three technologies in a single build. Leaders say the approach aims to reduce costs, improve efficiency and expand access to affordable housing.
“This project represents the next evolution of how Habitat can build smarter, faster and more affordably,” said Shauntrice Williams, CEO of Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg. “Innovation is not about replacing people. It’s about empowering volunteers, stretching donor dollars further and creating high-quality homes that families can depend on for generations.”
Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg has long been recognized nationally for construction innovation. In 2021, the affiliate built the first 3D-printed Habitat home in the United States in Williamsburg. That success led to two additional 3D-printed Habitat homes constructed side by side in Newport News, as well as four homes in Charles City County built using insulated concrete form technology.
The Toano project is supported through a statewide initiative led by the Virginia Center for Housing Research at Virginia Tech, which received a $400,000 Prefabricated Approaches and Volunteer-based Enhancements, or PAVE, Innovation Grant from Virginia Housing.
The PAVE program is designed to reduce affordable housing construction costs by optimizing volunteer-based homebuilding through modular framing, preassembly, training and software-based design. The initiative is being used to construct 18 homes across Williamsburg and Richmond. Afterward, the model will be evaluated for expansion to Habitat affiliates throughout the commonwealth.
The 3D-printed wall panels for the Toano home are being produced using a large-scale Tvasta concrete printer owned by Virginia Housing and made available at no cost to nonprofits statewide to encourage innovation in housing construction. The specialized concrete mix and pump mechanism used for printing was developed by Hive3D. The mix is about three times less expensive than materials previously used while maintaining durability and performance standards.
By shifting key construction steps into a controlled warehouse environment and simplifying on-site assembly, Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg hopes to create a repeatable model that other affiliates can adopt, helping address labor shortages while maintaining Habitat’s volunteer-driven mission.
“This work is about more than a single house,” Williams said. “It’s about creating scalable solutions to the affordable housing crisis — solutions that can be shared, taught and replicated across Virginia and beyond.”
Construction on the Toano home is expected to continue through 2026, with lessons learned helping inform future Habitat builds across the region and the commonwealth.