Two entrepreneurs answer questions about their area plans
MARFA — AI-generated images of desert dwellings recently advertised by companies Makin.ai and OJR Marfa have locals wondering if the content represents real property developments or if it’s just more AI slop overwhelming the internet and attempting to capitalize on the town’s popular name.
The Big Bend Sentinel got in touch with the people behind the Makin.ai website — which lists its headquarters in Antelope Hills — and Instagram account @OJRMarfa, advertised as a Valentine-based real estate company, to learn more about their plans. Since The Sentinel initially reached out, the two men behind the entities have also announced a collaboration called SHAIPES.ai, billed as “the future of affordable housing” in Marfa.
Makin.ai is owned by New Zealand-native Shaun Lamont who is building a home for Marfa resident George Hinkley in Antelope Hills. OJR Marfa, which stands for Old Jackson Road, is a newly-formed LLC started by Dallas lawyer Clay Jackson, who owns a swath of land outside of Valentine he plans to develop. In both cases, AI-generated images were a fast, easy way to advertise their planned projects, they said.
From left, desert homes advertised by Makin.ai and OJR Marfa.
“I did the whole website in less than two hours for $17, so that’s really hard to compete against,” Lamont said. When asked if the prices advertised — $350,000 to $530,000 per home — were accurate, Lamont said no, explaining that AI just “threw numbers up,” and he could build houses for a “much more affordable” price somewhere in the $180,000 range for an 800-square-foot space.
Jackson said he received “push back and skepticism” on Instagram for posting images of ranch-set cabins and little adobe homes with kiva fireplaces that were generated by ChatGPT. He sees the images as “proof of concept,” he said, and professional 3D models made by people are forthcoming.
“I’ve engaged with people in comments and tried to make that clear,” Jackson said. “I probably could have done a better job by labeling the post explicitly as, ‘This is AI generated.’”
“I don’t want to be the AI guy,” he added.
But Lamont is also using the technology to build. He has owned a swimming pool company since 2022, but the Hinkley home in Antelope Hills — which is set to be completed soon — is his first ever home construction. Lamont has an Austin-based factory equipped with computer numerical control (CNC) machines where he and a team produce thick EPS (expanded polystyrene) panels, a foam product often used as an insulator, wrapped in a “special cement” coating that they are using to construct the home. Hinkley’s 1,500-square-foot home is made up of 189 panels hauled from Austin to Marfa on trucks, Lamont said.
“If you imagine the houses are rather like a LEGO; they’re big panels, 8 by 4 panels,” Lamont said. “Windows cut out, doors cut out, everything’s ready to go.”
The house Lamont and team are constructing for Hinkley out of expanded polystyrene (EPS) panels. Courtesy photo.
Local construction teams helped pour the home’s concrete slab and are assisting with electrical, plumbing and erecting the structure, he said, but there are “no screws, no nails.” Lamont estimated that he and his team — who he refers to as “shape makers” rather than traditional home builders — can produce the panels and construct a house in as little as four months. While there are no building permits or regulations required due to the home’s location outside of city limits, Lamont said the house will be built to International Code Council (ICC) standards so that it is insurable and sellable.
Lamont said he’s used AI software to generate hundreds of different designs for homes, and the fact that AI is not a professional architect with “traditional constraints on materials” — which often leads to wonky, unrealistic renditions — is, in his mind, an advantage, leading to more creative shapes the CNC machine can print. “Its ignorance is bliss,” Lamont said.
“Knowing that I can get my AI design into my CAD (computer aided design) system and my CAD system can speak to my CNC system, that means that my AI house of any particular shape can be cut out by my robot with no more effort than it would to be to have a traditional four-sided house with a gable roof, doesn’t make any difference,” he added.
He said his company has “a proprietary work pipeline [to] help the transposing system to go from 2D to 3D to construction plans,” but humans still have to sign off on critical points.
From left, EPS panels on route to Marfa and Hinkley’s kitchen island.
For Lamont’s client Hinkley, who’s also a friend, it’s been exciting to see the home they’ve worked on together “now actually materializing.” Lamont has meticulously documented every step of the construction process; a suite of photographs reveals images of EPS panels strapped to a truck flying down the highway, a dusty day on the work site, local Brian Moody on a tractor and shots of Lamont’s BMW Z3 coupe.
Hinkley has been living in an Airstream on his Antelope Hills property for years and, once fully complete, envisions a two-bed, two-bath house with a covered porch and a roof deck on his property. He said Marfa “has this reputation as a place to showcase innovative building technology,” and the EPS panels — the building blocks of his home — result in an energy efficient space that can be constructed at scale, with fewer trades. It’s similar to 3D printing, but involves simpler technology, he said.
“I just think it checks a lot of boxes for going forward,” Hinkley said. “Especially for being out in Marfa, which is remote. You have to plan the whole thing out because a Home Depot run to El Paso takes a lot of time.”
Among the home’s highlights Hinkley listed are his new kitchen island, a custom curvy structure with two antelope carved into it made out of EPS, as well as curved edges where walls meet floors. Ceiling beams are the only wood in the home.
From the outside the house does not appear to have any curves and resembles a typical rectangular structure. Hinkley described the look as “sort of a modern take on adobe aesthetic.” “Yes, we all know it’s Styrofoam, but when the building is done, it’s basically a stucco, concrete, adobe-like structure, simple lines, maximizing the views, a lot of glass,” he said.
Lamont, who has a background in 3D imaging and data processing, supplied Hinkley with a virtual reality headset to walk around his house with so he could see the CAD model for himself, noting where the water and electrical lines are. “It was useful,” Hinkley said. “I was like, ‘Oh, wait a minute, my elbow is too close to this wall when I’m opening up the refrigerator. Let’s move the door over here.’”
Courtesy photo.
For now, Hinkley’s home is Lamont’s only project in Marfa, but he is in contact with at least one other landowner in Antelope Hills who might be interested in working with him, he said. Clay Jackson of OJR Marfa is also in discussions with Lamont about launching a new company together and building affordable housing on his Valentine ranch.
Lamont said, “We are all looking at El Cosmico,” whose new hotel site is in view of Hinkley’s property, recognizing that ICON will soon be 3D printing a variety of structures on previously open land. He said he thinks “speculative” developers and builders are here and will continue to keep coming.
“People don’t want to live in cities because they’re volatile and they’re super expensive, and when you add all these things up, a brand like Marfa becomes a very effective proposition for people to land in,” Lamont said. “I think that the rise of that should not be underestimated.”
Jackson agrees West Texas has a “gravitational pull,” one that has led to a boom in the real estate market and lack of affordable housing for locals — a longstanding, complex issue not entirely unique to Marfa that he said he wants to help solve. As a potential buyer, he said he found Marfa’s housing prices “absurd,” and “offensive,” often comparable to prices in larger cities with more resources.
He said he is striving to create a real estate company that “doesn’t suck,” and is “outwardly mission based,” having been involved with property developers in the past in his role as a lawyer. Jackson’s land holdings are not in Marfa as his company’s name would suggest, but are in Valentine — off of FM 2017, bordered by 96 Ranch — and near Van Horn totaling nearly 100 acres, he said.
On Instagram, @OJRMarfa states that a portion of its profits will be donated to “nonprofit initiatives rooted in justice, inclusion and access” like “legal aid for immigrants, LGBTQ+ Texans and working creatives.” When asked how Jackson will ensure transparency about the donations, he said the company will open itself up to be audited and produce an annual public report stating what percentage of nightly stays go to which organizations.
Up until recently, when he met Lamont, Jackson intended to pursue the addition of campsites and short-term rentals on his Valentine ranch in order to raise capital for an affordable housing initiative, he said. But after being introduced to Lamont and the Antelope Hills home project, which Jackson referred to as “profound,” he is going all in on partnering with Lamont to establish “affordable houses for people in West Texas within the year” — under $200,000.
“It was an obvious decision to partner with him, because he can not only build anything you can dream, literally anything, any structure, any shape, he can do it, but he can do it faster than anyone that’s around,” Jackson said.
Next up is to pursue a construction loan and determine how many structures they are going to build, he said. Eventually, the duo is hoping that construction companies will adopt Lamont’s techniques. “We don’t want to be home builders,” Jackson said. “What we wanted to do is connect people who build homes — construction companies — with the proprietary technology that Shaun has developed.”
Jackson recognized that there’s “a lot of infrastructure that needs to catch up.” Valentine lacks a gas station, for example, but he still thinks people will be drawn to buy new homes in the remote outpost. “I think Valentine’s the type of place where if people can afford to buy a home for $200,000, $250,000 — considerably less than anything that’s available around Marfa and Presidio County — I think that people will come.”
