With an early architecture career focused on high rise and large-scale projects in Europe and New York, Daniel Lopez-Perez built a deep understanding of design possibilities enabled by building technology innovation.  After moving to California in 2009, his curiosity shifted to residential in response to the emerging housing crisis.  Soon in this new chapter several questions surfaced for Daniel: Why is the vast majority of housing still being built in the same way as 150 years ago, one 2x4 at a time? If not with 2x4s, what building technology can we leverage to build beautiful housing in a smarter, faster and more climate-change resilient way?

Simultaneously to this tech-based inquiry, in conversation with Celine Vargas, his life partner and human behavior expert, another conundrum quickly surfaced:  With so much need for housing, so much unused land, readily available funding and ever more favorable building legislation – why aren’t more people building more housing, faster?  Upon concerted listening, the answers became clear and were quite simple.   Property owners shy away from building because they fear the process will be overwhelming and unpredictable; and, builders simply can’t clone themselves nor fund an R&D department to develop the innovation that could allow them to build better, faster. Put simply, this means that we are collectively leaving money on the table and not increasing the housing supply for the good of our communities.

With these questions at the forefront and imagination in need of productive channeling during the Covid lockdown, Polyhaus was born in 2021.  Our mission is simple: to accelerate growth of housing supply by offering a patented rapid-construction system that helps the industry scale.  Strong believers that the proof is in the pudding, Daniel and Celine built Polyhaus’ first model, the Tetra I a 540 sq.ft. ADU, in their own backyard with completion in 2024.  The result was proof of concept that the patent-pending method, which leverages advanced engineering and adapts technology widely used in large-scale projects into the smallest scale of housing, works to accomplish many goals: 1) generates beautiful residential spaces; 2) maximizes living space volume with minimal land use; 3) exponentially reduces building times; 4) produces climate-change resilient homes; 5) achieves cost-competitive standards.