For generations, concrete has been the almost automatic choice for the podium beneath multistory housing. It carries tremendous loads, satisfies strict fire requirements, and gives architects, engineers, and code officials a system they already understand. A new affordable housing project in Los Altos, California, is showing the industry that “the way we have always done it” may no longer be the only answer.
At 330 Distel Circle, 90 affordable apartments are being created by stacking four stories of factory-built modules over a ground-floor podium constructed with cross-laminated timber panels, mass timber columns, and beams. The project team believes it is the first American development to combine volumetric modular housing with a mass timber podium—bringing two forms of offsite construction together in one remarkably ambitious project.
What makes this project worth watching is not simply its choice of materials. It demonstrates what can happen when designers, developers, manufacturers, and contractors stop treating construction systems as competing alternatives and begin combining their strengths. With completion expected months ahead of schedule, this California project may offer the industry an important preview of how affordable housing can be built faster, more sustainably, and with less dependence on conventional construction methods.
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