Inside Moxy Oakland: The Bay Area's Newest Multi-Level Modular Hotel w/ Lowney Architecture [podcast transcript]
Inside Moxy Oakland: The Bay Area's Newest Multi-Level Modular Hotel w/ Lowney Architecture
Ken Lowney, president and CEO of Lowney Architecture, discusses the design and construction of Oakland's newest hotel, Moxy Oakland Downtown. This award-winning project is the first modular development for Moxy Hotels. Ken talks about the hotel itself, some of the challenges his team faced during the building's construction, and how he was able to leverage its modular design to create a unique rooftop lounge.
Ken also discusses his team's long history with modular construction and shares his advice for young architects looking to get started with modular building design.
John McMullen
Hello and welcome to Inside Modular, the Podcast of Commercial Modular Construction, brought to you by the Modular Building Institute.
Welcome everyone. My name is John McMullen, and I'm the Marketing Director here at MBI. Today I'm talking with Ken Lowney, President and CEO at Lowney Architecture. Ken is here to talk about his firm's work on the new multi-story Moxy Hotel in Downtown Oakland.
Ken, thanks for being here.
Ken Lowney
John, it's a pleasure. I love talking about modular. Thank you for inviting me.
John McMullen
Well, you're very welcome. Thanks for being here.
So, tell me about yourself, Ken, what's your background and what drew you to architecture in the first place?
Ken Lowney
Let's see, I grew up in Palo Alto, California, which is now primarily known as sort of the center of the universe for tech, and software design, but back then it was a sleepy, Stanford University suburb. And I, my father is an engineer, he had an engineering company. So and I worked for him for many years through high school and college. So I kind of got the idea of two things. One, I wanted to have my own company, and to, to be a some kind of professional service provider, but that's slightly more artistic inclinations. So I end up being an architect, you know, my, I was lucky enough to be do a lot of travel growing up in Europe and Central and South America. And, and subsequently, Asia. So just part of my looking at different cultures, has been to the built environment. So looking at their cities, looking at their buildings and architecture, and so that, you know, that really spoke to me. So that's that, that's sort of that or, you know, my first degree is in philosophy. And so I'd always joke, I'd be a lawyer. But I don't want to be a lawyer. I'm married one, and she doesn't want to be a lawyer. So anyway, I'm an architect now, and very, very happy for it. Although I have to say, since I have about 50 employees, I don't do a lot of architecture, I do a lot of contract writing, negotiation, business development, things like that. But still, I enjoy it.
John McMullen
Well, good. Tell me about your experience with modular design. What when did that begin? And what did what did modular design bring into your portfolio?
Ken Lowney
Yeah, it happened. Like most things in life, it was just an opportunity. And I took it, and I didn't realize how good it was going to be, frankly, when I started off. So it was a small 23-unit project in San Francisco for the great developer, Patrick Kennedy, of Panoramic Interest with Panko Builders, and with a now defunct factory called zeta communities. In my firm learning architecture, we we did that it was the first one. So I think you're done had done something in the South Bay, and it didn't come off very well. Just and that was a phasing issue, not a given issue. And so, modular was just new. Right. So that was the first one in San Francisco, the second one in the Greater Bay Area. And so it's sort of a bunch of first for us was design-build delivery, it was all Revit. You know, we use Revit, all the engineers use Revit, the contractor used Revit, to factories Revit. So we had one model, we all worked on passing around and developers, so that was great. And we built this little building with a rain screen on it was a slab on grade building, zero lot line, built in four days, and was very successful, except that we didn't really know how to build it. So we lost money. The contractor lost money, the engineers lost money think that the developer eventually he made money.
But there were tours given for months and months afterwards. And there's so much interest in modular and what the possibilities just there's another way to build a building was kind of like, mind blowing for people's like, what are you kidding me? We don't have to do it the same stupid way every time? And so that sort of tsunami, if you will, that excitement, that momentum of people being hungry to do something better and different, has continued. You know, and I'm doing, I give a lot of talks in modular--I'm a lot of panels--and, you know, there's a lot of hype. There's a lot of, you know, talk talk talk, there's a lot more talk than action because we don't have enough factories. I mean, as a percentage of what we actually do is there's not that much of what is built is modular, unfortunately, but we need to do more. So we're getting back to anyway, so this this one little teeny project was the first one we did and that sort of set it off for us. We put all our chips on the table and went after modular and worked with Guerdon on their first type three projects by over two in Sacramento and then started working with, you know, a lot of affordable housing developers.
And, you know, for-profit developers...and now we've sort of spread to all the usual suspects factories in Boise, Idaho. I've done work with CIMC, even some European factories. And we've done most of the work at a factory_OS in Vallejo, here just in California. And it's been, just as a business, it's been a great differentiator for us, because now we've done built 20, you know, complicated, multi level modular projects. And so, you know, an experienced, another experienced architect might have done one. And so like, we it's just wonderful, great. It's just great for us. You know, even though we've had a lot of success, success as a terrible teacher. And the good thing about modular is a lot of teaching that goes on. So there's always something we learn on our project. But nonetheless, generally, projects come out great, and people are satisfied that they they did modular every now and then we do. There's something that happens, we wish it didn't happen. But you know, we move forward, and we learn our lessons. So anyway, started with a small project, and that we're working with all the big nonprofit, affordable housing developers in the Bay Area. And a lot of market-rate developers.
John McMullen
Well, you mentioned projects that have turned out great, which is a great segue. Let's talk about the Moxy hotel in Oakland. It's a beautiful building, I believe you guys won an award for it at MBI's recent Awards of Distinction contest. So congratulations on that.
Ken Lowney
Thank you very much. It was fantastic. We feel very pleased with that.
John McMullen
Good! I also believe it this is Moxy's first modular hotel. Is that right?
Ken Lowney
I believe so. But I don't know that for sure.
John McMullen
Okay...let's just claim it's true. How did your firm get involved in that project? And what were your initial thoughts?
Ken Lowney
Let's claim is true. So, you know, just how architects get work is somewhat shrouded in mystery. You know, partially it's, you get work from previous clients, you get work from cities, or contractors or developers. I mean, ultimately, a developer that hires you, but how do you get in a position to be hired? So, in this particular instance, it was the broker who was selling the property to a developer brought me in, and then we sort of took it from there. We partnered with the, the, and that developer partner with another developer, and that developer brought in another architect, which, at first was doing a lot and ended up doing not very much.
So we were the design architect and the modular architects for the project. And it, it's great in a lot of ways, I mean, it's a obviously, it's an infill project. There's no parking. So one of the that's one of the great things about as far as making an economical, you don't have to build a parking structure. So it makes the rooms a lot cheaper. And the main thing from the City of Oakland's standpoint was not that the building had to be built with a union contractor, but that the hotel had to be operated by union members. And so once the client agreed to that, then it was all downhill. Of course, you know, cities love hotels, because of that tax revenue. And just from a business development standpoint, now that it's built and humming along and looks great. It's great advertising for us. We're getting more and more work from that one building. So it's been it's been great for us. And more and more interviews.
John McMullen
And here we are!
Ken Lowney
Yeah, exactly.
John McMullen
Exactly. So tell me about the design process for this hotel. I imagine Moxy gave you some some idea of what they wanted. I'm sure Oakland had some thoughts since this is right in their downtown district. And what other parameters did you have and how did you incorporate everything
So Moxy is definitely has a specific idea of what they want. So it's definitely sort of a younger crowd. The they're, they're very small units. You know, they're every single one is, is a single, there's a double bed and there's no closet. So you're hanging clothes on the wall, there's a wall with a bunch of pegs on it, you hang your pants or your dress or whatever on that. And then there's a nice bathroom but it's pretty bare bones, sort of high design, bare bones. And all each room has a what I would say is that it has an oversized window compared to a normal room. So you feel even though the room is small, it feels quite expansive.
Ken Lowney
And so it's, it's all up in it fits for really forward thinking younger folks, and so that the decor of the room sort of reflects that and the size of the room as I said, so it's really not, it's really about being, you know, either in the bar below or the restaurant, there's a, there's a adjacent restaurant as part of the project or out of the city walking around. So it's not really about being in your room and watching TV, it's about being in that location was right, it's right, where, you know, a monthly arts fair happens. And there's a bunch of great restaurants and several theaters. So it's a very good location.
John McMullen
Cool. And this hotel is a hybrid project, I think. It was five levels of modular rooms over two stories of site-built space. How did that affect your design? And are there any general guidelines you follow when designing hybrid buildings versus those that are completely modular?
So I would say 85% of the buildings we do have a podium, which is that concrete structure that one or two levels, and you've got the manufactured boxes on top. So most of our buildings are like that. So we're pretty used to the coordination that has to happen between the site-built portion and the factory -built portion.
Ken Lowney
Yeah, so you know, the rules of thumb are, you have to just remember that, you know, every box, every six-sided box has six sides, which have depths and dimensions. So if you put that box on top of a podium, your floor level isn't the podium level, it's this new artificial extra bump. And so I mean, it's it's just your stairs are a little bit longer and you manage your elevator differently. But other than that, it's it's pretty much the same as a regular construction for a building. On the Moxy, it was the builder's first time doing modular, so a couple of hiccups. One of them was locating the embeds that were to take the modules on the top is a two level podium. So the embed to accept the modules were in the every one was in the wrong location.
John McMullen
Oh no.
Ken Lowney
Right. So just figuring that out. So that would mean that the the, the lines of the walls, which in the in the structural resistance wouldn't line up, the plumbing would line up mean the building just wouldn't work. That was a little bit of a hair raising moment for the builder. So I mean, the drawings were right, but that was just you know, how it happened. We don't know. But we managed to get make it through that and, and get to building obviously, in the podium, the rooms that are in the podium are site built and the rooms that are above the podium, are manufactured in the factory.
John McMullen
Well, yeah, you just describe something that didn't quite go according to plan. What did go according to plan, what happened that really worked on this project?
Ken Lowney
Hotels are great for modular because you really want everything in the box delivered, and you don't want people going in and out, of course, hoarsing around with you know, F&E stuff. And so they arrived with very interesting complicated beds that had drawers and shelves in it. And that came off great, right, they're built, they were built installed in the factory. And that was that was wonderful. So the quality is there. And just so that the the separation between the rooms is very, it's all about privacy, right, you've got double walls. And so that works out quite well. And I would say also that we, for the first time, used a cementitious cladding. So it's a ceramic tile finish. And I mean from some angles, you can see actually I'd never seen it before one of my colleagues said I've seen these little kind of waves in the in the seven-storey building, but I've been surprised when I've been up close and building and looking for imperfections. Because often you know with wood boxes, it's not I mean, it didn't turn out perfect, right. So you have to do some shimming and whatnot. But the the surface of the finished wall came out beautifully. So the contractor did a great job, the subs did great job it looks the simple form of a building but it has a very kind of luscious material. And if it had been kind of lumpy and waving around, it would be less appealing but it just I think that came off great. So that says So kudos to Nashua, the builder, and kudos for Suffolk who's affected and got caught on the box at the right place so that turned out great.
John McMullen
Well it is it is definitely a beautiful building. One of the features I love is the big Moxy sign. It looks like there's a maze on the front of the building which is very distinctive and very cool. Question for you. Did you have to factor in the weight of that sign?
Related Reading:
The Moxy Downtown Oakland
The Moxy Downtown Oakland, a 7-story, 173-key hotel boasts several notable firsts: first hotel in downtown Oakland in 20 years, first modular project completed in the downtown core, and first modular Moxy hotel completed in the U.S. Utilizing the city’s opportunity zone investment program, the hotel anchors the developing KoNo neighborhood in the Arts District and fosters new opportunities to boost the local economy.
Ken Lowney
No, it's very light. It's, it's, it looks heavy, but it's you know, just lightweight bent metal, it's you know, painted.
John McMullen
Okay, it does look great.
Ken Lowney
What's great about the building is that roof deck that faces Telegraph Avenue. So you go up, you go in a nice bar, then you can go to the next level. And there's outdoor seating, there's ping pong tables, you can order drinks and food up there. And the cost of that outdoor deck, from a looking at it just from the modular standpoint, was zero. So once it was determined that we had a solid box four or five modules to make the building turn into an L, we realized we could slide that short leg up and down the length of the long leg. And there'd be no no cost, right? There'll be no additional sandboxing or anything. So like, huh, we can push it back a little bit and get this great outdoor space, and not penalize the cost or efficiency of the factory or the stacking or the design in any way. So that was a great realization.
John McMullen
Was there any part of the process that really challenged you?
Ken Lowney
No, no, not really. But so one of the challenges for the project was, you know, the, you know, I would say that ideally, for a project like this, it has 170 keys, and I recall, so it's five over two, ideally, for a project like this, you would stack, you know, 10 to 14 boxes a day. And unfortunately, in this instance, we see that we're only able to stack one box a day.
John McMullen
Oh, no.
Ken Lowney
Yeah. So so that was very, so that was, you know, partially a learning curve, partially circumstantial, you're in major in the downtown. So that hurdle, you know, slowed down the project a lot. But I would say that was kind of the, the biggest takeaway is, you know, do what you do best. And so there's companies that stack modules, right, like a Proset. And so better to have someone like that do it than to try to do it yourself. And so they're like, there are some great examples of builders in the Bay Area that do it themselves. But it's, yeah, that was that was the from a project levels standpoint, from that would be the one thing even more, the only embedded issue was the stacking one box a day. So when you think of modular, you think, Oh, it may maybe, you know, save a lot of money, but it's faster. So in this instance, that it was less expensive, but it was just because of the the method that was that they used, it was slower. So anyway, next time, well, of course, it would be faster. But you know, there's always the learning. Always learning, but in the end of the day, you got a beautiful-looking building.
John McMullen
And, and some and some happy clients, I'm sure. Before I let you go, I'm curious. Your firm has been doing modular projects, big modular projects, for quite a while now. How have you seen modular designs evolve in that time? You know, since your very first project that you mentioned at the top of the show to the Moxy? How have designs evolved? And not just the physical design, but the methodology of the design? What trends are you seeing? What's next?
Ken Lowney
So there is, from a business standpoint, there was a great opportunity to crack the code on reducing the cost of construction. That plus the opportunity, or the crisis, if you will, the housing crisis. In the Bay Area, California generally says it takes there was I read an article that takes three or four minimum wage jobs, that's $15 an hour to be able to afford a house in California now. So it's insane. Right, right. And so the 10 years ago, there was one factory in California. And now, I mean, we're talking to five or 10 factories that are either headquartered here, maybe they have a factory in Mexico or they've had multiple locations and people are trying to print buildings, we've got people using panelization. And what what I've seen is the first wave of people coming in, thought that, you know, people that were in the modular industry already or people that were in construction already, were somehow missing the mark. And they were, I don't know, I wouldn't say that they thought were stupid, but they thought that certainly, you know, they were so good at solving things in the internet and creating new new worlds that way that they could just raise them Capital and open a factory and kind of invent a new way of building without really understanding buildings. So, as it turned out, like companies like Katerra certainly blew it. I mean, my favorite remark from one of the former Katerra executives was they "misunderstood the complexity of field conditions." Which, of course, that's all construction is: one field condition after another.
And so there are a bunch of, there's more and more people coming into the space trying to solve manufactured housing, from multi level big projects in different ways, you know, would be Type V, metal, panel, volumetric, even printing, as I just said, that that is something that sort of ecosystem of entrepreneurship, trying to solve this problem is super exciting. And it's going to yield something we don't know what it is, you know, and so some of these companies only work for themselves, you know, they're developers, also, some are providing third-party boxes. And so the more that we use this ecosystem, the more it's proven. Again, and again, and again, the more widely adopted, it will be. But right now, I mean, so there's this word, a tipping point where, where a lot of people see the risk of modular doesn't make up for the reward that you might get. But then as a very vocal, strong minority, saying, You're out of your mind, cost construction is going crazy union laborers boxing us in, we have this as the only way out. So I think more and more, we're going to see these, some of these factors will fail. And some of these factors are going to come up with this wonderful delivery method, and push modular forward into other other ways of building that we just haven't seen before. So I'm looking forward to that.
And so there's, there's so many factories that are just popping up, that's the great new thing is people are taking the risk, the business risk, and really going for it.
John McMullen
So given that there's been so much invention and innovation, all these new ways of building the past few years, what would you say to a designer to an architect who's coming in and discovering modular, wanting to do modular offsite construction, any of the types of construction you've mentioned? What would you say to that person to get them going? What advice would you give?
Ken Lowney
Oh, god, it's one of those things where work for someone that has done it before. So that's the that's the main thing. There's, there's enough that's different about it, that it's worth going through one on and then you know, it's the the dual permitting. And then the sort of the forward review of construction, even though you're it's everything was so much more accelerated in a different order than construction. So I'd say intern or work for an architect. That's done it before.
John McMullen
And what's coming up? That's good advice. That's good advice. What's coming up for Lowney Architecture next? What's next for you personally, for your firm? Are you working on anything fun?
Ken Lowney
Yes, what am I working on now. So modular really opened the door for my firm for hotels. And so it's, we most of the modular work that we do, is multifamily. And it's sort of the bulk of it. But the past, oddly enough, it really accelerated in the pandemic and sort of modular has given us again, this competitive advantage. Hotel developers and and the flags themselves are, of course, interested in saving money and quality. And modular does that in spades. So not all of our hotels end up being modular, but a lot of them do. And that is something that is really exciting and gratifying. And so that that whole market opened up for us because of modular. And so we're very happy about that. I mentioned, we have an office in Honolulu, in Honolulu, and we work in all the islands in the state of Hawaii. And they pretty much have the same market profile and scarcity of resources and, you know, income issues and lack of affordable housing, and they don't really have any modular is just hasn't really even started there.
And so we're starting to talk to builders, who we're actually helping set up a factory right now, for a builder, which is exciting. And we're working on some very large projects, where the client is talking about this is so big, there's like 2000 units is big enough that it might make sense for us to actually build the factory or work with The factory to get, you know, either on the islands or mainland to start thinking thinking and a different way to deliver housing. So that and then, of course, working with the unions to solve that. So that is really exciting. So the more people that adopt modular, the more people that are willing to, you know, roll sleeves and make it work, the better it's going to be for everyone, you know, and we're not with certainly we're not going to solve our housing crisis. I'm in the United States is like two and a half million. How housing short housing units short, so that's gonna It's so when the idea of manufactured housing is here, and we have to just start to implement it to solve our problems.
John McMullen
That's a very, very exciting project for you Hawaii, beautiful location. Maybe you can talk to our board of directors about opening an office [for MBI] in Honolulu. I'm sure the MBI staff would not mind.
I know you're busy. Before I let you go, I'd be remiss not to mention our upcoming events. MBI is hosting its next World of Modular next spring in Las Vegas. And we're sponsoring the Offsite Construction Expo in Denver next month. Any chance you're attending either of these?
Ken Lowney
I'm not only in my attending, but I'm speaking certainly at the Offsite Construction Expo in Denver. We've got our talk proven and I'm hoping to speak of the one in Vegas too.
John McMullen
Fantastic. Well, I will see you at those, I hope.
Ken Lowney
Yeah, of course.
John McMullen
Excellent. Well, Ken, I really appreciate your time today. It's been a pleasure. It's great to talk to you as always. I look forward to seeing you next time, either in Denver or Vegas.
Ken Lowney
Yeah, absolutely. John, have a great day out there. Enjoy that sunshine.
John McMullen
I will do my very, very best. My name is John McMullen. And this has been another episode of Inside Modular: The Podcast of Commercial Modular Construction. Until next time.