What Makes a Nabr Building
Nabr treats buildings as products, not projects. Here’s how our building system allows us to standardize construction — and customize where it matters.
By Daniel Glaessl and Joshua Plourde
Here’s what typically happens when developers build today. Each new building is treated as a one-off project. In order to have the capital to build, developers turn to investors, whose goal is to maximize project-level returns. Developers then assemble an architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) team — often collaborating together for the first time — who aim to create a beautiful, livable building. Then, in a process known as “value engineering,” the AEC team takes a once-ambitious design, and — in the name of returns — often ends up stripping away features, until they’re left with a banal yet (theoretically) profitable building.
In most sectors, products get better over time. Yet these market dynamics mean that in real estate, it’s the older buildings that are often higher quality. Plus, the process never improves — it’s inefficient and time-consuming, each time.
Nabr treats buildings as products, not projects. And we set out with a goal of creating a design system that would be worth repeating. We achieved this through a two-part solution. First, we created a standardized, technology-enabled system for the building infrastructure, and then we invested in customization where it actually matters, to give each building a distinctive look and feel.
Today, we’re excited to share how our building system works.
Standardized parts, flexible outcomes
We developed a core and shell system — architectural terms for the structural components, or “bones” and “skin” of a building — that consists of standardized pieces that can easily be assembled together, like LEGO. Our design process is done in OnShape — a software that comes from the precision manufacturing industry — ensuring all of our pieces always fit together. The beauty of this system is how flexible it is: our designers can use our software platform to generate hundreds of different permutations — short buildings, tall buildings, sloped buildings, courtyard buildings, etc. This means that, wherever Nabr goes next, our system can respond to the site and create the kind of building that would best serve resident and neighborhood needs.
Mass timber hybrid structure
The core, structural elements of our building are made from a hybrid of recycled steel, which provides strength and stability, and sustainably harvested mass timber. For the unfamiliar, mass timber is a building material composed of pieces of wood laminated together, which are then treated so they are fire safe. Mass timber has been in use in Europe for decades and is, excitingly, beginning to take off in the U.S. The primary benefit is that, when harvested sustainably, mass timber has much less embodied carbon than concrete or steel, leading environmental groups and academics to push for its use. As a plus, it also creates a warm, biophilic interior.
Facade panels
Once we have the floors and structural columns assembled, we then attach “mega” panels to create the skin of the building. These facades can be clad in a variety of materials, creating variety in the look and feel of each building. A Nabr building in the Southwest could be clad in terra cotta, while one in the Pacific Northwest in wood, for example — it’s up to the design team.
The facade panels, which feature high-performing insulating materials, are also designed for maximum air-tightness. Why does that matter? The tightness of a building envelope is one of the key parameters for a building’s energy-efficiency. Thanks to the envelope, we need very little energy to heat and cool the building — and, in California, where we’re drawing from a carbon-free grid, the little electricity we use is clean.
The panels also offer openings for floor-to-ceiling windows made from View glass, translucent glass that can transition into tinted glass in order to block sunlight. This type of glass can reduce a building’s cooling needs by about 20 percent — another sustainability and user experience win.
Oversized Terraces
Next up, we add balconies (what we call terraces) to each floor of the building. Our goal is to create outdoor space big enough to rival a backyard, allowing residents to use the space for lounging, eating, playing, working out, etc. These large terraces also offer shading — another very effective, passive means of reducing the building’s solar heat gain.
We’ve designed this system so that the terraces’ positioning, size, and aesthetic can be changed for every building we make in the future, so each Nabr building will have its own personality.
With these four elements, our system will be able to consistently deliver high-quality, sustainable buildings that feel unique — first in San Jose, and then around the world.
Check out our next post to read about the key features of every Nabr Home.
