Archinect - News

LA City Council approves changes to boost housing stock despite detractors

2024-12-12T15:57:00-05:00

The Los Angeles City Council has decided on regulatory updates to the 2021-2029 housing element that will center new development mainly in commercial districts and existing high-density residential neighborhoods while avoiding single-family zones in spite of the benefits proven to be offered by the latter.

The 15-0 vote allows for additional building in those areas provided a certain percentage of affordable housing units are included. Some have labeled the single-family zoning exception as 'exclusionary' as those plots cover 72% of the city. The update also allows for development on lots owned by public agencies or religious organizations. Los Angeles is currently facing an immense housing crisis and will have to present a plan to create an additional 255,000 homes to the state by mid-February.

(h/t Urbanize LA and the LA Times for the update)

New York's bold 'City of Yes' vision gets approved by City Council

2024-12-11T18:44:00-05:00

Last week, the New York City Council voted to approve an amended version of the Adams Administration's 'City of Yes' housing vision for 80,000 new homes over the next 15 years.

This will require a $5 billion public investment and comes with several key inclusionary zoning (including ADUs, office conversions, the removal of parking requirements, etc.) changes to help deliver on the promise. New York City has been suffering an affordability crisis for several years. Speaking to the media, Adams framed its passing as being both historic and a victory for working class New Yorkers.

We featured the New York Times' recent explanation of underlying factors influencing the 'City of Yes' plan before its approval.

Multifamily housing starts plunge to 2013 levels, largest gap since 1974

2024-12-09T11:31:00-05:00

Starts of new multifamily apartment buildings in 2024 have fallen dramatically to 2013 levels, according to an analysis of data taken from HUD and the U.S. Census Bureau from the Texas-based Madera Residential. Nationwide, there were a total of 804,000 units under construction by the end of October.

This represents a 19.2% year-over-year decline. The starts-to-completions gap is now the largest its been since 1974, says Madera's Jay Parsons. Overall housing starts were however shown to decrease only slightly to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.3 million in October. (h/t Construction Dive)

A snapshot of 2023's residential construction data from HUD and the U.S. Census Bureau can also be found here.

Unpacking the factors behind New York City's complex housing crisis

2024-11-26T14:29:00-05:00

The New York Times recently outlined some of the facts underpinning NYC’s housing crisis ahead of an upcoming final City Council vote on Mayor Eric Adams’ amended ‘City of Yes’ zoning overhaul plan for 80,000 new residential units on December 5th.

Among the interesting takeaways: only 10% of zoned residential lots allow for the construction of high- or moderate-density buildings through "as of right" development. The plan also calls for ADUs and a framework to fund office conversions, which account for 20,000 units. Currently, the rate of new apartment construction in the city is still at historic lows. The Regional Plan Association estimates there will have to be 473,000 more units of housing by 2032 to match its current needs. (h/t Forbes.)

Rowan Moore: UK architects should look elsewhere for council housing inspiration

2024-11-25T17:59:00-05:00

In Britain, as our government has promised, we’re going to have a “council housing revolution”, the building of as yet unknown numbers of homes at genuinely affordable rents, a return to policies of 50 and more years ago in order to address the well-known housing crisis. Which is welcome. Luckily there are, close at hand, outstanding examples of how this might be done, in cities and countries on the continent of Europe.

Moore points to Vienna, the city known for its ambitious development model for social housing, and Barcelona as two examples of what he says is a healthy "willingness to experiment" to be applied back home in the UK. The new Labour Party government has promised to usher in a "revolution" in council housing to deliver the up to 100,000 new homes needed per year to match current needs that have been made worse for years by bad policies and a lack of funding.

The same set of issues are plaguing efforts back across the pond in New York City, where Moore's American counterpart Michael Kimmelman recently considered some "radical" alternatives being pursued as part of NYCHA's complicated new plans.

Considering the next Trump administration’s impact on housing in California

2024-11-22T11:56:00-05:00

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to reenter the White House, California housing advocates are bracing for how a second term could impact the state’s notoriously high home prices, rents and rates of homelessness. This time around, that’s changed, and Trump has recognized housing affordability is a problem, said Matthew Schwartz, executive director of the policy organization the California Housing Partnership.

Democrats were also pushing a housing-heavy agenda during the campaign. Trump's return to the White House comes as the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies reports many cities across the Golden State are missing their marks where it comes to planning an adequate housing supply that matches the expanding crisis.

Trump has vocally supported the call for massive tent cities for unhoused citizens, vowing at the same time to issue tariffs, deport undocumented immigrants, open federal land to housing development, cut government assistance programs, and relax zoning restrictions, among several other countervailing ideas that could cancel out progress on what became one of the 2024 election's most significant issues.

LA’s cramped rezoning plan still short of housing goals says UCLA study

2024-11-19T11:09:00-05:00

Under state laws designed to remedy a housing shortage, the city has to set aside land for the construction of 250,000 more homes than allowed through existing zoning rules. Measures under consideration by a City Council committee are likely to satisfy the state requirements, the UCLA analysis found. But when analyzing the likelihood of what developers would actually build, researchers found the number of new homes would be far lower.

The L.A. City Council is expected to vote later this afternoon to approve the rezoning measure. The report's co-author Shane Phillips of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies says the city would be better served if its generous slate of incentives was expanded to cover the remaining 72% of neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family houses. Others have labeled this plan as exclusionary for that reason. Planners face a state mandate to find space for at least 250,000 new housing units by mid-February.

New LA housing permits fall while planners look north

2024-11-13T09:22:00-05:00

A new report from Hilgard Analytics and Zenith Economics has the numbers behind the turndown complicating LA’s multi-pronged housing crunch. According to the available Los Angeles City Council data, the number of new permits this year has fallen 30.7% on pace toward a new five-year low.

Permits are on the rise this year only in the eastern precincts of the San Fernando Valley after a 2022 high in all other City Council districts recorded. This follows news of a flatly less resourceful Planning Department decision on single-family zoning’s future. The city has to build at least 2.5 million homes to meet demands by the end of the decade. (h/t Urbanize LA.)

Steven Holl winds up Helsinki with Meander Housing design

2024-09-18T17:28:00-04:00

Steven Holl Architects, in collaboration with Newil&Bau, has opened a new multifamily development in Finland's capital called Meander Housing. The September 12th inauguration marks the end of a journey that first began in 2006 and underwent a period of dormancy before being constructed in just 2.5 years.

Image: Jenny Kallio

Helsinki’s Taivallahti Bay provides the backdrop to the 115-unit building that was recuperated from a former military barracks in the city’s Taka-Töölö district.

Image: © Kuvatoimisto Kuvio Oy

Holl designed the project as though building equivalent to a musical crescendo, with its 180 meter (591 foot) central volume tapering in section oriented to the ocean and fluctuating at various heights between two and seven floors.

Image: © Kuvatoimisto Kuvio Oy

Accordingly, it weaves or 'meanders' along a stem-winding path interspersed with strategically placed landscaped voids and wrapped in a glazed enclosure.

Image: Jenny Kallio

The wood materials used in its construction...

10 modern home designs that stood out this week

2024-09-14T08:00:00-04:00

In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding projects on various Archinect Firm and People profiles.

Today's top images (in no particular order) are from the board Houses.

Tip: Use the handy FOLLOW feature to easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect profiles.

↑ Canyon5 in Los Angeles, CA by Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects

↑ Meteorite in Kontiolahti, Finland by Sotamaa

↑ ASHER PROJECT in San Jose, CA by STYLARC

↑ Z-Haus in Portland, OR by Waechter Architecture

↑ 6 x18 Slender House in Delhi, India by Spaces Architects@ka; Photo: Bharat Aggarwal

↑ Stony Hill in Amagansett, NY by Bates Masi + Architects; Photo: Bates Masi + Architects

↑ Black Diamond House in Buffalo, NY by asap/ adam sokol architecture practice

↑ SC Residence in Manhattan Beach, CA by Laney LA; Photo: Roger Davies

↑ FUTAGO HOUSE in Kyiv, Ukraine by MAKHNO Studio

To see more highlights from Archinect's Pinterest boards, c...

AIA releases seven-point advocacy agenda for 2024 U.S. elections

2024-09-13T12:45:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architects has released a statement urging action on a number of key priorities related to architecture and the built environment for the 2024 presidential elections following Tuesday’s debate between candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

"Architects across the country are keen to see greater progress toward key goals related to the built environment and our businesses," 2024 AIA President Kimberly Dowdell says in a preface to the seven-point agenda. "Our top election priorities highlight critical issues including the need for increased investment in affordable housing, aggressive climate action measures, enhanced resiliency against natural disasters and sound tax policies."

"[The] AIA calls on the candidates as well as the incoming new Congress to listen to architects as experts on the forefront of designing a more sustainable future," her statement continues. "Through these priorities, AIA’s members will continue to move the built environment forwar...

NYC forms task force to search for housing opportunities on gov't owned land

2024-08-26T14:53:00-04:00

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has announced the formation of a new multi-agency task force aimed at finding city-owned land and properties that can be redeveloped in the interest of putting an end to its greatest housing crisis in more than 50 years.

According to amNewYork, the new City Housing Activation Task Force is operating under a directive to “review all land under the ownership and control of the city or of other participating and cooperating agencies and entities … to identify potential sites for housing development and to determine if such sites could be used to further housing production … without disruption to critical operations."

Former NYCEDC President Maria Torres-Springer is leading the task force. It expands on the 'City of Yes for Housing Opportunity’ proposal that was launched by the Adams administration in September of 2023.

ACDF links old with the contemporary in new Montreal student housing design

2024-08-21T18:53:00-04:00

A student housing project combining heritage conservation with facadism, the new 19-story LINK design from ACDF Architecture, is now ready for use in Montreal’s Shaughnessy Village.

Just steps away from Concordia University and other local colleges, the project provides much-needed affordable housing options for students while reusing facades culled from the demolition of three existing Victorian structures with only a minimal sacrifice to its programmatic efficiency.

Photo: Adrien Williams

“Such a rehabilitation mission can generate an interesting return on investment for developers, and this approach, more sensitive to the context and built heritage, would have the merit of being much more contributive to the community, and thus a very interesting asset for the marketing of this residential rental project,” the firm’s president Maxime-Alexis Frappier explains in a press release.

Photo: Adrien Williams

The preservation of the past is such a key consideration here granted the extensi...

Barack Obama calls for a housing revolution at the 2024 Democratic National Convention

2024-08-21T15:54:00-04:00

Calling on lawmakers to do away with the "outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people," former U.S. President Barack Obama thrilled audience members with an impassioned plea for mass-scale housing production at the 2024 Democratic National Convention last night in Chicago. One comment ("Right now, we are building housing this big. But we need to start building housing this big") has earned him a new viral reputation as a "YIMBY."

The rallying cry echoes remarks made two years ago at the 2022 AIA Conference on Architecture, namely about the intersection between housing justice, social inequality, and government policy that architects inhabit being intractable. Both the embattled single-family and expanding multi-family markets shrank by 6% and 14.4%, respectively, last year, according to Census Bureau data.

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris' plan to build three million new homes in four years faces a considerable amount of obstacles related...

Apartment construction remains at 50-year high in 2024

2024-08-12T17:15:00-04:00

This year will be the first year in U.S. history that more than 500,000 new apartments are constructed, according to a new analysis of the 2024 rental market from RentCafe.

The trend, which is anticipated to abate slightly in 2025, may again resurface by 2028 with exceptions remaining in markets such as Minneapolis and Houston.

Topping the list was the greater New York metro area with 32,935 new units despite the city having permitted its lowest number of new apartments since 2016 last year. Dallas followed closely in second place, with booming Austin, Texas, finishing a distant third. Housing efforts there have struggled to keep pace after demand began to rapidly increase in 2020.

Phoenix came in fourth on the list with 20,141 new units, giving a face to the effects of the construction loophole underpinning its population boom in the face of questions surrounding water scarcity. (Paradoxically, as RentCafe points out, “[a] shift towards sustainability could be one of the reasons...

Massachusetts changes direction for reuse of Paul Rudolph's brutalist Government Service Center

2024-07-29T12:34:00-04:00

The planned reuse of Paul Rudolph’s oft-reviled Boston Government Service Center has taken on a new direction with a housing-focused proposal from the administration of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey. The updated plan replaced a previously announced NBBJ overhaul that would have remade both the Erich Lindemann and Charles F. Hurley buildings into an office block with labs for scientific research. Now, with the demand for each shrinking, the state is poised to reroute the redevelopment to match its previous benchmarked demand for over 69,000 new homes by 2030.

The newly released press statement noted: “The site remains architecturally significant due to its unique mid-century design, and the Administration will prioritize historic preservation in the renewed redevelopment process.” A formal RFP for the new plan could come as soon as this year.

Terner Center's report on construction defect liability turns a new page for California housing reformers

2024-07-26T11:48:00-04:00

The latest report from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation on the stasis of multifamily developments in California has identified existing construction defect liability laws as a barrier to enabling housing justice statewide.

This issue involves the risk taken on by developers of condominium projects and particularly affects BIPOC communities who are less likely to be homeowners than their peers. California’s policies are therein compared to others in the United States and Canada. The findings will help lead to legal reforms to increase homeownership and should be considered especially by architects working in the state's surging multifamily market.

The NYT picks up on the 'gender mainstreaming' movement in urban planning

2024-07-25T19:32:00-04:00

A new planned community is built on the urban design philosophy known as ‘gender mainstreaming.’ [...] Ms. Kail acknowledges that the parameters of gender mainstreaming are in flux. Where there used to be “a focus on the everyday life of white, middle-class women and their children,” she said, over the past decade or so, a new crop of urban planners has widened the lens, just as she’s stepping out of it.

Vienna (the city previously declared by the Times to be a "renters utopia") owes a tremendous thanks to Eva Kail for its apparent equity strides. Though recently retired, the urban planner touts the new Aspern Seestadt development and its "female face" as the embodiment of the movement to infuse gender-conscious urban design concepts to socially engineer cities and suburbs into places of empowerment for women and other traditionally marginalized groups and classes.

The leading cities to embrace the movement toward "gender mainstreaming" include Stockholm, Glasgow, and Barcelona. In line with this movement, the UN-Habtitat also quietly announced the launch of its 'Women-led Cities' initiative last June.

New York City could soon mandate air conditioning in all residential buildings

2024-07-18T18:40:00-04:00

City Councilmember Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn, who confirmed the news with Gothamist on Wednesday, said he plans to introduce his bill during Thursday’s stated meeting. The bill is intended to mimic current local law requiring landlords to provide tenants with heat during the winter months by requiring them to ensure tenants can cool their homes to at least 78 degrees when it is 82 degrees or warmer during the summer, Restler said.

Councilmember Restler, who argues that the new legislation is tantamount to requiring heating in the winter, also told the New York Times it will "save lives as we reckon with the challenges of the climate crisis." Landlords would have a maximum of four years to comply with the mandate.

The Thursday vote comes as meteorologists are saying 2024 is likely on pace to be the hottest year on record.

New apartment construction in NYC at historic low again

2024-07-14T08:00:00-04:00

The crisis of housing in New York City isn't going anywhere soon: The latest data from a key city agency has revealed a pronounced stalemate in the number of new apartment buildings currently planned for construction in all five boroughs. A lack of tax incentives, including the expiration of rule 421a, and high construction costs (as we covered in our two-part feature on the current economy for the architecture industry) are both likely motivating factors.

Bloomberg reports: "Last month, developers filed 36 permits for multifamily buildings, which, excluding the period of Covid lockdowns in 2020, was the lowest monthly count for May in a decade, data from the New York City Department of Buildings showed. And last year, permits for about 15,500 apartment units were filed, the lowest since 2016, according to the Department of City Planning."

This revelation, one year after the borough of Manhattan approved exactly zero new apartment starts, mirrors a national trend. The Regional Plan ...

On the elevator's role in our skyrocketing housing calculus

2024-07-10T11:22:00-04:00

Through my research on elevators, I got a glimpse into why so little new housing is built in America and why what is built is often of such low quality and at high cost. The problem with elevators is a microcosm of the challenges of the broader construction industry — from labor to building codes to a sheer lack of political will. [...] It’s become hard to shake the feeling that America has simply lost the capacity to build things in the real world, outside of an app.

Stephen Smith, through the New York nonprofit Center for Building in North America, has been exposing variables that undermine the housing market's intricate calculus in the form of building codes, cost of labor, zoning regulations, and the construction industry.

He says: "Elevators in North America have become over-engineered, bespoke, handcrafted and expensive pieces of equipment that are unaffordable in all the places where they are most needed. Special interests here have run wild with an outdated, inefficient, overregulated system. Accessibility rules miss the forest for the trees," adding, "The United States and Canada have also marooned themselves on a regulatory island for elevator parts and designs."

Last year, New York City became the most expensive construction market in the world, with an average cost of $506 per square foot, according to an analysis from Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business.

Costco to deliver 800-unit mixed-use housing scheme to Los Angeles

2024-07-03T12:41:00-04:00

A plan from big-box giant Costco to deliver an 800-apartment mixed-use scheme designed by AO in Los Angeles is garnering some positive reviews online for its response to the city’s vexing housing crisis.

SFGate.com has more on the latest attempts to tackle the emergency, which remains at the top of a list of municipal priorities despite recent progress on the issue from several fronts.

Rendering courtesy Thrive Living

They say the five-acre development will include a "fitness area, multi-use community space, multiple courtyards and landscaped paths, a rooftop pool, and other amenities like gardens," in addition to parking spaces for both tenants and store customers. A total of 184 apartments will be set aside as affordable housing. A recent popular X post detailed the complex regulatory considerations the scheme maneuvered and contributed to its modular design. The client is Thrive Living, a privately owned developer of workforce housing.

The now 50-year-old AO is also notable for ...

In the ‘battle’ for Sydney’s brutalist Sirius building, public interest loses

2024-06-25T08:00:00-04:00

A decade ago the only way to secure a bed in Sydney’s brutalist icon, the Sirius building, was a proven need and time on the social housing waitlist. Now the price of admission starts at $1.55m – for a studio apartment. [...] Advocates who fought to save the building from the wrecking balls and from being sold see it now as the pinnacle of privatisation that failed the state’s most vulnerable.

The fate of Sydney’s martyred Rocks mirrors closely that of London’s Trelick and Balfron Towers, and the future of Singapore’s once caste-busting social housing system. As of our last reporting, the brutalist landmark has (finally, and forever) been saved from the wrecking ball — only to be turned over to private equity. The issue highlights what many see as the death of a progressive conception of planning, wherein accommodations for working-class people are placed in the center of cities and not the other way around.

"Sirius is the pointy end of the privatization of the city and entrenching 'ghettoes for the rich'," architect Philip Thalis puts it. "It’s bad for society if the best parts of the city are exclusively for people with the most means, particularly when allied to decreasing densities in those areas."

Meanwhile, the New South Wales state government just announced a "once in a generati...

Architect Liu Thai Ker on the success of Singapore’s social housing experiments 40 years on

2024-05-28T20:26:00-04:00

Even though record prices on the secondary market have heightened anxiety about the rising costs of living in Singapore, one of the world’s most expensive cities, public housing remains broadly affordable — at least for those who qualify for government subsidies to buy units. Today, close to 80 percent of Singapore’s residents live in public housing, and about 90 percent of the units are owned on a 99-year lease.

The architect of Singapore’s successful “social engineering” campaign after 1965, Liu Thai Ker, is a Malaysian-born Yale graduate and former understudy of I.M. Pei, who told the New York Times recently that he was “sad” to see the city-state’s current market dynamics affecting some of his democratizing designs from the 1980s.

Singapore has for years ranked alongside Vienna among the world’s leading cities for the development of social housing. The 86-year-old Liu continues his work as the Founding Chairman of the Singapore/Shanghai-based MORROW Architects + Planners, an entity he began in 2017 following the culmination of his 25-year run at RSP Architects Planners & Engineers.

California environmental review process is hindering affordable housing development, according to new state agency report

2024-05-28T12:57:00-04:00

A new report on California’s entrenched housing crisis from the state's independent Little Hoover Commission has identified the 54-year-old California Environmental Quality Act (or CEQA) as the greatest barrier currently in the way of architects and planners looking to meet the demand for 2.5 million new units statewide by 2030.

LAist.com has more on the report, which took over a year to compile. Among its findings is the concerning fact that 25% of all lawsuits initiated under CEQA have been challenges to infill housing developments in densely populated urban areas (e.g., Los Angeles). Authors say this could grow into all-out “urban warfare” that, in turn, overburdens exurbs and more inland areas. LA has been more proactive recently under the mayorship of Karen Bass but must still overcome hurdles to meet its mandate to build 500,000 new homes before 2029.

On the comparative difficulty of family-sized apartment dwellings in North America

2024-05-24T12:04:00-04:00

One major consequence of this difference in design is that the North American double-loaded corridor buildings are much worse at providing family-sized units. To illustrate the point, we’ll go through the different sized apartments one by one, and compare the floor area and design. You’ll notice that the American plans have significantly more floor area for the same number of bedrooms, and have much more lightless interior space up against the common corridor to fill.

Stephen Smith is a former journalist and the Executive Director of the Brooklyn-based Center for Building in North America. His analysis of spatial challenges created by multifamily apartments and zoning conditions was featured recently in Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast. This is an adroit relaying of an issue affecting both developers and architects in pertaining markets and compliments an earlier 2021 report on post-pandemic trends in multifamily residential design from the website Propmodo.

Smith writes: "The merits of North American building and zoning codes can be debated, but the effect is clearly that apartments, in order to provide the same number of bedrooms and give everyone a window, must necessarily consume far more floor area than point access block designs possible in other countries. So if you’re looking for a family-sized apartment in the U.S. or Canada and finding that new buildings don’t have what you’re looking for, it’s not you, it’s not the architect, and it’s not ...

64 building owners express interest in entering NYC's Office Conversion Accelerator program

2024-05-23T14:31:00-04:00

New York City's recently launched Office Conversion Accelerator Program has drawn interest from 64 building owners in Manhattan as planning officials mull changes to help speed up the process intended to deliver 20,000 new units of housing by 2033.

The market for conversion in Lower Manhattan has thus far yielded 2,100 new units in four converted buildings, highlighted by CetraRuddy's forthcoming effort at 25 Water Street, the largest conversion project in the country.

Still, as Gothamist reports: "The office conversion plan aims to produce thousands of new apartments, but none so far will be within reach for low-income New Yorkers who bear the brunt of the city’s housing shortage."

A potential game-changer is the proposal, backed by Mayor Eric Adams, to move the eligibility of conversion permits to include buildings constructed after 1990. Most of the conversions have targeted L...

Hotels surmount offices for residential conversion projects for the first time

2024-05-13T13:43:00-04:00

The balance of power in the market for residential conversion projects in the United States has shifted from offices to hotels for the first time, according to new statistics included in RentCafe’s latest market snapshot report for 2023.

Per their analysis of Yardi Matrix data, 4,556 of the 12,700 new apartments that were converted in 2023 were hotels. Office buildings were only slightly behind, with 3,587 converted units, representing 28% of the overall total. New York City led all markets with 733 conversions, followed by Albuquerque and Richmond, Virginia. A total of 151,000 conversion projects are in the pipeline currently across all 50 states, with a 17.6% increase being recorded year-over-year. The number of hotels being converted was up another 38.8% over the previous year.

Brookings research gives Los Angeles communities guidance for future ADU implementation

2024-05-02T18:02:00-04:00

New research published recently by the Brookings Institution has provided details of how local government in Los Angeles can galvanize a newfound abundance of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) through policy changes in order to combat an ongoing housing crisis currently affecting more than one million Angelenos.

Authors Jenny Schuetz and Eve Devens state: “The Los Angeles region offers a useful setting to explore the prospects of affordable ADUs. Four jurisdictions within the region have developed affordable ADU pilot programs. One program, the city of Los Angeles’ LA ADU Accelerator Program, offers operating subsidies for existing ADUs, while the other three offer development subsidies as well as vouchers to cover operating costs.”

This research can be used to bolster architects’ so-called “toolkit” of affordable housing solutions in conjunction with the recent Harvard Center for Housing joint study that compared the strengths and failures of California’s policies with those in othe...

Cosmic set to produce prefabricated ADUs in California with water recycling and solar energy

2024-04-23T13:58:00-04:00

San Francisco-based Cosmic has raised $1.5 million in funding for their micro-home product designs aimed at bringing “self-sustainable homes in California and beyond.” The company’s leading product, Cosmic ONE, is described as a “limited-edition high-quality micro-home” that can serve as an ADU, a primary single-family home, or a component in a wider residential community.

Showroom model. Image courtesy: Cosmic

Cosmic ONE has been designed as an all-electric, prefabricated unit that can use recycled water for non-potable needs, as well as being equipped with a solar and battery system. The first 100 CosmicOne units will be available for sale in California.

Showroom model. Image courtesy: Cosmic

“Building a new home and expanding an existing one today can be very challenging due to the intricate permitting process, labor scarcity, and complexities of site infrastructure works,” the company says about their prop...