A vacant Lahaina lot that once held a home destroyed in the August 2023 Maui wildfires has become the site of the first mass timber dwelling in Habitat for Humanity’s global history. That is according to Hawaiʻi Off Grid Architecture + Engineering, the Maui firm whose volunteer bunkhouse is now rising as a flat-pack system built for rapid disaster rebuilding.
Designed by HIOG principal David Sellers, who also sits on Habitat for Humanity Maui’s board of directors, the Bunkhouse uses veneer-laminated timber walls and glue-laminated timber roof panels dimensioned around a four-foot module. That module allows termite treatment before installation, efficient shipping across the Pacific and rapid assembly once the panels reach the site.
Sellers, who led the design with support from WoodWorks, said two decades of underbuilding had left the islands unable to rebuild Lahaina at the speed residents deserve, and the bunkhouse answers that with a system that can be prefabricated and deployed after future disasters. “Recovery doesn’t have to mean rebuilding the same way,” he said.
The flat-pack logic is the point for HIOG, which conceived the dwelling as a proof of concept for prefabricated mass timber as a route to affordable, resilient housing at a lower cost and faster pace. Maui’s largest architecture and engineering firm, HIOG, commits 30 per cent of its work to community projects and partnered on disaster relief after the 2023 fires.
According to Jennifer Cove, president and chief executive of WoodWorks, the partnership advances education, workforce development and design work for new mass timber housing prototypes whilst honouring local architectural character. “This project demonstrates how mass timber can strengthen post-disaster rebuilding,” she said.
Meanwhile, Matt Bachman, the executive director of Habitat for Humanity Maui, said the bunkhouse will expand the charity’s volunteer capacity in Lahaina, where each additional worker moves another family closer to a permanent home. “Volunteers have always been at the heart of Habitat for Humanity’s work,” Bachman said.
HIOG expects the Bunkhouse to be completed within four months, with August 2026 the target — three years after the August 2023 fires razed the lot and much of historic Lahaina.
