Steve Glenn, CEO of Plant Prefab and LivingHomes (right here in Santa Monica!) drops by the podcast to discuss factory-built modular homes and why he started a tech company instead of following his childhood dream to become an architect.

Prefab is unique in its ability to shorten the timeline for many building projects, including custom single-family homes, multi-family, and affordable housing. We also talk about other benefits of prefab, including reduced waste, lower labor costs and increased quality control.

Episode Sponsor - www.sustainablehomesofthefuture.com

Contact Host - info@shfbuild.com

Steve Glenn is the founder and CEO of Plant Prefab, the first prefabricated home factory in the nation dedicated to sustainable construction, materials, processes, and operations. All Plant projects are prefabricated in the company’s 62,000-square-foot home factory in Rialto, CA, with a patented building system that reduces build time by at least 50% over traditional construction while minimizing construction’s negative impact the environment. Plant was born out of LivingHomes, the award-winning design agency Glenn founded in 2006 that now serves as Plant’s in-house studio. Glenn’s ultimate goal is to define a new standard in residential home design and construction, helping individuals, architects, and developers alike efficiently design and build high-quality, cost-efficient, healthy homes.

Glenn holds two patents and his company’s work has garnered many of the industry’s top honors, including the AIA Top Sustainable Award and the Sustainable Quality Awards Grand Prize. Twenty-seven LivingHomes have been certified LEED Platinum and five more LEED Gold, making the company one of the most experienced designers of homes at the highest level of LEED certification. The company has also received other awards including Architizer’s Jury andPeople Choice Awards, Green Builder Magazine’s “Home of theYear,” Business Week’s “Architectural Wonders of the World,” and Steve has been deemed Clean Tech “CEO of the Year,” “Environmental Entrepreneur of the Year” by LA City Council/Faith2Green, and Huffington Post “Greatest Person of the Day.”

Steve also sees prefab building as the solution to the country’s affordable housing crisis. Plant built seven single-family, LEED Platinum certified homes in LA’s Atwater Village and has also built homes for the Make It Right Foundation in New Orleans and the Ft. Peck Indian Reservation in Montana. A recent collaboration with Brooks + Scarpa Architects was chosen as a winner in the LA County Housing Innovation Challenge, seeking scalable housing projects to address the county’s homeless population.

Before LivingHomes and Plant Prefab, Glenn was founder and CEO of PeopleLink, a leading provider of enterprise e-community solutions; founding partner of idealab, a business incubation firm that raised and invested $1 billion in a number of successful companies; co-director of the Virtual Reality Studio at Walt Disney Imagineering; and co-founder of Clearview Software, which was sold to Apple Computer in 1988.

Glenn is also a co-founder and chair of the Sustainable Business Council, co-founder of the Kaia Parker Dance Endowment, and a co-founder and former board member of Hope Street Group and the Brown University Entrepreneur Forum.

Glenn holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Brown University, studied Urban Planning at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and was a Coro Fellow.

Show Notes:

Nest Project w/ Brooks + Scarpa - https://www.plantprefab.com/models/brooks+scarpa-nest-livinghome-toolkit

Return Of A Jedi: The Legacy Of "Star Wars"

NPR

For the best of Hark in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.