MOVING House, Built to Move

B.PUBLIC Prefab is proud to be supporting an important project that's already earning national attention.

MOVING House, led by Rob Corser and Julie Kriegh at the University of Washington, just won a 2026 Housing Education Prize from The American Institute of Architects (AIA), Housing and Community Development (HCD) Knowledge Community, and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). It's one of only three winners chosen from course proposals nationwide.

The project addresses a real and growing threat facing Coast Salish Indigenous communities along the Washington Coast. For millennia, these Tribes built for seasonal movement, dismantling cedar-plank longhouses each summer and carrying the materials with them to hunting and fishing grounds. Since the early 20th century, though, they have lived permanently at their traditional winter village sites near the shore, and those sites are now threatened by rising sea levels. The Moving House project asks what the tradition of seasonal relocation could look like today, with panelized Passive House construction and design-for-disassembly engineering standing in for cedar planks. The goal is a modern home that can be taken apart, moved, and reassembled without losing what makes it home.

In the spring and summer of 2027, UW students, Indigenous Tribal members, and construction professionals will research, design, and then build a full-scale housing prototype together. University and Tribal youth from several area Tribes will work side by side on the build. The goals extend past the prototype itself. The team aims to support workforce development with Indigenous Tribes, develop panel systems that Tribes could eventually produce themselves, and create a model for climate relocation that other coastal communities could adapt.

B.PUBLIC is named as an instructional partner in the winning proposal, working to support students and community leaders in understanding how to design for this project with prefab panels.

A national prize from AIA and ACSA is a strong endorsement of this work, and we're honored to be part of it from the start. For more information about the project, see ACSA's website or the project proposal.