The city of Brownsville in Texas will soon be home to a brand new Starbucks. If you’re wondering why that is newsworthy, let us elaborate a bit. The new spot is not just any brick-and-mortar Starbucks location: it is is being 3D printed. According to local sources, the construction of the new drive-thru coffee shop is well underway on Boca Chica blvd, with concrete walls and Starbucks branding already in place.
The first hints of this construction 3D printing project cropped up in December 2024, when a local social media account in Brownsville shared some footage and images of the construction site being set up. As Brownsville Today wrote in a caption: “The first 3D printed store building in the valley is being made here in Brownsville! Starbucks on Boca Chica! Spoke to a couple of workers and they said ‘you might be drinking coffee by February.”
Manufacturing on Demand
3D printed Starbucks in Brownsville, Texas (Photo: Brownsville Today)
More recent images show how far the build has progressed: the 3D printed structure appears complete—the 1,400-square-foot external shell bears the distinct layered texture of 3D printed concrete—with windows and drive-thru infrastructure set up. While official details on the project are slim, the 3D printing appears to have been carried out by PERI 3D Construction using a COBOD gantry-style 3D printer.
COBOD’s technology has been playing an important role in the proliferation of construction 3D printing. In fact, the company’s hardware is said to be behind nearly 40% of all 3D printed buildings. One of the most recent projects that relied on COBOD’s 3D printing technology was a 3D printed social housing project in Ireland—the first in Europe to comply fully with the ISO/ASTM 52939:2023 standard. This project, led by Harcourt Technologies Ltd, consisted of a three-unit terraced social housing project that was built in just 132 working days—35% faster than using traditional construction methods.
The IT server hotel being built in Heidelberg, Germany
PERI 3D Construction has itself been behind many 3D printing construction projects, leveraging COBOD’s hardware to create an IT server hotel in Heidelberg, Germany—which has the title of being Europe’s largest 3D printed building—, a multi-storey social housing apartment building in Germany, a Habitat for Humanity building in Arizona, and many more.
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Ronald Rael 3D prints ‘Adobe Oasis’ for art show in Coachella Valley: The Coachella Valley, best known for hosting the eponymous music festival, is also home to the Thousand Palms Oasis, a fertile area in the desert where palms thrive thanks to underground water sources that are pushed to the surface by the San Andreas fault line. The unique, almost feathery texture of the palms was one of the inspirations for Rael in his Adobe Oasis project. Another key inspiration for the interactive installation was traditional earthen building practices, developed by indigenous peoples for over 10,000 years.
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Author: Tess Boissonneault
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