NH Housing Innovation Lab
Developing and validating the next generation of affordable, healthy, climate-resilient housing for Northern New England.
Promising technologies need real-world evidence.
Many new and re-emerging building approaches offer potential advantages in cost, health, environmental impact, and resilience—but lack the field testing needed to support broader adoption.
The NH Housing Innovation Lab is a proposed collaborative research and demonstration initiative intended to bridge that gap through transparent testing, comparative evaluation, and shared learning.
01 · Field test
Build and instrument small, real-world cold-climate prototypes.
02 · Validate
Evaluate performance against housing economics, health, resilience, sustainability, and scalability.
03 · Accelerate
Share evidence and help promising solutions move toward housing deployment.
Three systems. One rigorous question.
What would it take to create a new generation of housing suited to Northern New England's economic, environmental, and climatic realities?
High-performance self-consolidating concrete
A proposed lightweight cementitious approach to investigate construction simplicity, thermal performance, and material efficiency.
Rammed earth
A low-processing earthen system to study local sourcing, durability, thermal mass, and embodied carbon.
Straw bale
A bio-based approach to investigate insulation, renewable materials, moisture management, and carbon storage potential.
The proposed Danbury, NH field site would host three approximately 250-square-foot detached, nonhabitable research structures, subject to partnerships, feasibility, approvals, and funding. No technology is presumed successful in advance.
Not just: does it work? But: can it become housing?
Affordability & health
Construction and lifecycle costs, indoor air quality, thermal comfort, moisture control, and material health.
Resilience & sustainability
Cold-climate durability, changing weather conditions, energy demand, embodied carbon, and resource use.
Constructability & scalability
Codes, permitting, insurance, finance, labor, and repeatable delivery.
Model → Build → Measure → Validate → Improve
The Lab would follow the evidence, including documenting approaches that do not meet performance or market-readiness thresholds.
Research with a pathway to practice.
The Lab is currently a concept at the partnership-building stage. Its first proposed phase would focus on governance, research methods, technical feasibility, pilot design, and funding strategy.
We're interested in connecting with universities, students, building scientists, builders, manufacturers, municipalities, housing organizations, and funders.
Explore collaborationRelationship to FIRST Communities
FIRST is an early-stage housing development venture. The Lab is envisioned as a separate research and demonstration initiative. Both share an originator and a goal of better housing, but the Lab's findings would be intended for the wider housing sector—not solely for FIRST.
The Lab's legal structure and governance have not yet been established.