Design for Life
Health begins at home: we spend half our lives at home, so we must think very carefully about what shares that space with us.
Caplow Manzano designs a new type of home: No drywall, no cavity spaces, no plumbing buried in the walls, no sealed AC ducts.
We think adaptation to our environment requires a complete reinvention of the home from the inside out, so that we prevent health problems before they happen.
Our homes are 100% free of drywall, eliminating the most common location for mold. Walls and ceilings have no hidden cavities for pests or moisture. We make all plumbing accessible, so you can fix leaks the moment they happen – in 5 years or in 50 years. We minimize AC ducts, and prioritize easy cleaning, leaving nowhere for dust and allergens to hide. We design floors and ceilings with hard, impregnable materials such as polished concrete and lime plaster. Synthetic insulation is only allowed outside the building’s air envelope, not inside the living space. All interior materials and finishes are naturally non-toxic.
By designing for health, we’re also designing for longevity - our approach inherently leads to more sustainable materials and less environmental impact. But we take resilience a step further:
Miami is already the wettest big city in America, and the decades ahead will bring rising seas and a changing climate, both here and in urban tropics around the world.
Our homes are elevated 10 feet off the ground. Drier today, drier tomorrow. Advanced air and water filtration with real-time monitoring, large rooftop solar arrays, backup power…all standard. Our homes are the only houses in Florida that meet both LEED Platinum and WELL Residence certifications.
Caplow Manzano creates the healthiest homes available, with the durability to protect that investment for generations. As an architect-developer, we are able to pursue this unified goal from the earliest schematic stages all the way through completion of a building.
There will be a city here in 100 years, and we intend to be part of it.
Caplow Manzano. We design for life.
Hypostruction: Life without Drywall
After six years of tearing apart conventional notions of what should be inside a home, we have developed a design philosophy that we call hypostruction.