Fire-Resistant, Sustainable Home Offers Solution to Climate and Housing Crises
Professor and Architecture Program Director at the University of San Diego, Daniel López-Pérez, designed a fire-resistant home he calls the Polyhaus, a 540 square foot home which consists of just 64 panels.
Instead of traditional lumber, Daniel says the home was built using mass-timber products. This method offers half the rigidity of reinforced concrete, while weighing a fraction (20%), and has a burn rate of hours (1.5 inches per hour of char-rate).
“Fire cannot enter. It has a harder time entering,” López-Pérez said. “So it’s char rate, given its massiveness of weight and the fact that it has no air cavities.”
According to Spectrum News, He said all the Douglas Fir came from Washington as part of a collaboration with a reforestation project, creating a plug-and-play housing model that slashes construction costs and helps keep forests healthy. Traditional home construction requires thousands of two-by-fours and extensive manual framing.
The Polyhaus system simplifies this process significantly.
Joaquin Ramirez has been working to reduce the impact of wildfires and extreme weather through his company Technosylva. He also works with the International Association of Wildland Fire analyzing wildfire risk and working with agencies like CAL Fire to make operations safer.
“I feel like it’s a genius design,” Ramirez said. “You have a structure there are no holes, which that is really critical.”
