DALLAS, TX – The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) named KTGY Architecture + Planning’s Park House as the winner of its 2019 Innovation Challenge at its annual OPTECH Conference and Exposition.
The challenge seeks innovative solutions to vexing apartment industry challenges. This year’s challenge sought solutions for reducing the construction costs or time to bend the cost curve of housing production as a way to address the nation’s housing affordability crisis.
KTGY Architecture + Planning edged out 50+ other applications with its proposed solution to retrofit underutilized parking structures with reused shipping containers to create multifamily units. The firm projects that converting 10 percent of existing parking, which is finding decreased demand in a world of car sharing and other mobility options, could create one million affordable housing units.
“NMHC has committed significant resources to create an ecosystem that encourages innovation within the industry,” said Rick Haughey, NMHC Vice President of Industry Technology Initiatives. “Our Innovation Challenge is just one of many efforts to showcase firms that are rethinking the way apartments are built and managed to address today’s consumer demands, and in this case, the increasingly difficult economics of delivering housing that is affordable to working households.”
KTGY’s winning submission proposes to recycle parking structures and shipping containers as a means of leveraging modular housing’s efficiencies to deliver housing at a lower price point.
“We are thrilled to be recognized by NMHC for our thought provoking R+D work,” said KTGY National Development Director Jeremy Agraz. “Our R+D Studio strives to develop creative concepts and innovative solutions that address critical challenges facing our clients and the communities where we work. We applaud NMHC for its consistent focus on the nation's affordability crisis and through the innovation challenge creating a platform for creative companies to share bold ideas that strive to lower the cost and time it takes to bring much needed housing to market.”
The other four finalists competing with KTGY were:
- Prescient: A digital design-build system that could automate structural engineering, precise manufacturing and rapid on-site assembly into one single digital thread.
- Upbrella: Technology that allows for fully sheltered construction structures and envelopes of high buildings made of either concrete or steel without the need of tower cranes. Allows more than 80% of structure and envelope work to be done at the height of an average worker.
- VirtualAPT: Provides digital visualization technologies that allow for 3D point clouds and Revit model overlays to visualize how a space will look when fully built and digital staging in vacant built units (without size limitations).
- KTGY's Hope on Alvarado: An advanced modular construction project to create housing for the chronically homeless in Los Angeles.
Learn more at innovation.nmhc.org.
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Based in Washington, D.C., the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) is the leadership of the three trillion-dollar apartment industry. We bring together the prominent apartment owners, managers and developers who help create thriving communities by providing apartment homes for 39 million Americans. NMHC provides a forum for insight, advocacy and action that enables both members and the communities they help build to thrive. For more information, contact NMHC at 202/974-2300, e-mail the Council at info@nmhc.org.