A budgeting primer for the custom home, 2026 edition. Somewhere in Cincinnati right now a couple is sitting at a kitchen table with a sketchbook, a laptop, and a number. The sketchbook holds a house they have been drawing in their heads for years, which is to say a kitchen with a long window over … Read more
Eighty Years of Operating Energy. The house you build will operate for eighty years, at least. The car you buy next month will be on the road for twelve. Of the choices a household makes about its environmental footprint, the building decision is the one that compounds the longest. Eighty years of heating. Eighty years … Read more
Six stories. Twenty-four households. Four units per floor. A point access block is a mid-rise apartment building where one centrally placed stair serves every unit on every level directly. Four to six units per floor. Up to six stories under Type I-A or Type II-A non-combustible construction, fully sprinklered, with a pressurized stair enclosure and … Read more
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed the Senate on March 12 by a vote of 89 to 10. The House passed its version in February, 390 to 9. Bipartisan support at that scale is rare for anything in Congress right now. Housing got it. The bill is not law yet. The Senate added … Read more
This is Part 4 of our series on the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. [Part 1 covers the bill overview. Part 2 covers pattern books and BuildReady. Part 3 covers point-access blocks.] A healthy neighborhood has renters. This needs to be said plainly because the national conversation around Section 901 has collapsed into a … Read more
This is Part 3 of our series on the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. [Part 1 covers the bill overview. Part 2 covers the pattern book program and Cincinnati’s BuildReady initiative.] If there is one provision in this bill that has architects paying attention, it is Section 103: Federal Guidelines for Point-Access Block Buildings. … Read more
This is Part 2 of our series on the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. [Part 1 covers the bill’s three major provisions.] A two-bedroom apartment in a middle-tier Cincinnati neighborhood rents for roughly $1.25 per square foot. The wood-frame construction to build that apartment costs roughly $250 per square foot. A 3,000-square-foot duplex runs … Read more
There are thousands of vacant lots in Cincinnati zoned for residential construction. Most of them sit in neighborhoods that lost a quarter of their housing stock in the last fifty years. Almost none of them have a new building on them. On March 12, the U.S. Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act … Read more
Let’s be honest for a moment. You’re here because you care. You want to build a home that doesn’t just shelter your family, but also aligns with your values. You want to do right by the planet, create a healthy living space, and leave a positive impact. But as you start your research, you’re hit … Read more
A few conversations we’ve had from the Ice Box Challenge. The Ice Box Challenge at the Cincinnati Homearama has been an incredible experience. We set up two small structures in the sweltering sun: one built to standard building code, and one built to rigorous Passive House standards. Inside each, we placed a large block of … Read more