Key facts
- The "Outside the Box" proposal aims to address housing affordability by using vacant retail spaces as factories for housing components.
- New homes would be assembled on underused paved parking lots surrounding these repurposed buildings.
- The concept won the Grand Prize at the Ivory Innovations Hack-A-House competition.
- The team explored adapting existing retail buildings for panelized housing production using conventional materials.
A University of Arizona student team's "Outside the Box" concept, which proposes using vacant big-box retail buildings as factories for housing components and assembling new homes on adjacent parking lots, won the Grand Prize at the Ivory Innovations Hack-A-House competition. The idea, developed by students Brett Lewis, Yesenia Fragoso, Danna Moreno, Nicohole Galvan, and Francisco Quintana, aims to tackle housing affordability by leveraging existing infrastructure. The proposal suggests adapting large retail spaces with loading docks and open floor plans for panelized housing production, using conventional materials sized for transport. While the concept has not been prototyped or commercially proven, it has garnered interest from a building-products company exploring similar production models. The team's faculty adviser, Wil Peterson, guided them to consider the limitations of reusing existing structures, leading to a focus on wall panels over larger modules.