GroveHaus · MAD

A single GroveHaus unit at dusk in a California hillside garden, two people sitting on the patio under string lights — Panelised home · Los Angeles · 2025
GroveHaus

A fully panelised one-bed, one-bath modular home that four people can stand up in a day with hand tools.

Precision-fabricated bamboo-plywood panels lock together on site, so the shell goes up without a crane or any heavy machinery. Two to four installers can erect it in under 24 hours with a cordless drill, a level and basic hand tools.

Client: LIM Living
Program: 1 bed · 1 bath
Build time: Under 24 hrs
Crew: 2–4 installers
Structure: Bamboo plywood
Embodied carbon: −30% vs timber
Role: Architectural design engineer

GroveHaus unit plan: bathroom and kitchen along one side, a bed alcove and a living area with a sofa — Unit plan

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The entry side of a GroveHaus unit at dusk: vertical timber cladding, a louvred service bay, string lights over a raised deck where two people sit talking — Entry deck at dusk

Materials

Bamboo plywood and low-VOC finishes do the structural and cladding work, and a cradle-to-grave life-cycle analysis drove the material choices. Embodied carbon lands about 30 percent below conventional timber construction.

Fabrication

Digital parametric nesting cuts off-cuts and waste by roughly 15 percent, and every panel meets ICC-ES structural, durability and WUI fire-safety standards.

Interior of a GroveHaus unit: panelised walls and ceiling, a kitchen run along one side, a living area with a sofa, and a wall-mounted desk at the far end. The figure plays a walkthrough of the same room as built, unfurnished. — Interior, single module

Documentation

Construction document / assembly model

We keep the panel joints, the wet-core rough-in and the steel connections in one set, and the same geometry drives the interactive model, so what installers read on paper is what they orbit on screen.

Construction document: a wall panel in the ICC-ES cyclic test rig: elevation and two enlarged sections at left, an isometric of the panel on its sill and header beams, and an exploded axonometric calling out the hex bolts, sill plate, floor section block and steel beams — ICC-ES seismic test rig

Construction document: fire sprinkler and PEX plumbing rough-in, one long run above two connection details, with part callouts — Fire sprinkler and PEX rough-in

Interactive · SMEPF assembly

7.3 MB · runs in your browser

Structure and MEPF systems Enclosure: ghost it to see through

Mixed, stacked, massed

The core module links or stacks with additional units (studios, kitchens, extra bedrooms), and a steel structure lets it grow vertically into multi-unit configurations.

Three-storey stack of GroveHaus modules on a street corner at dusk, people walking past on the pavement — Three-storey stack

Students sitting and talking in a shared courtyard between clustered GroveHaus units — Clustered units, shared courtyard

My role

In a team of architects, engineers, procurement and production managers, my role was to work with them on the panels, developing the joinery and the composition in Rhino and Grasshopper. We ran the life-cycle analysis, and I produced the construction documents.

Rhino / Grasshopper
Life-cycle analysis
Construction documents

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