Panelized
July 2026 · Prototype
A 3D web tool for prototyping panelized (SIP) apartment buildings, one to four stories, six to twenty-four units, with prefab kitchen and bath pods.
Role
Design and engineering
Stack
Where the architecture degree and the multifamily brokerage overlap. Small apartment buildings are expensive because every one is a custom design. Structural insulated panels, prefab kitchen and bath pods, shared utility risers, and standard stair modules make the structure repeatable; a separate facade layer keeps the buildings from looking like it.
Panelized is a browser-based massing and unit-planning tool for that system: pick a story count and unit mix, place pods and risers, and see the building in 3D with a cost model that rewards repetition. It exists to test a thesis about the missing-middle housing that Chicago’s two-flats and three-flats used to provide, using the constraints I see on the brokerage side of the same buildings.