Gateway Decathlon: Exploring the Future of Housing
by Kai Parel-Sewell
In the face of the United States’ widespread housing shortage, the construction industry is searching for and exploring new ways of designing, constructing and developing housing. Gateway Decathlon embodies this search: a two-year, multi-staged, multidisciplinary design-build competition for students with a primary focus on innovative housing design and off-site construction in an old industrial neighborhood in St. Louis, just south of the Gateway Arch.
In November 2023, Cal Poly’s team, led by Construction Management Professor Maryam Kouhirostami, was selected to compete in Gateway Decathlon. The ultimate goal of the project is to design and build a prototypical prefabricated unit to be shipped to St. Louis. The competition comprises 10 contest areas, including design, engineering and construction, material and supply chain, wellness and livability, energy and performance, dwelling functionality, water optimization, innovation, market liability, and public perception.
Caption: Cal Poly’s Gateway Decathalon Team, led by Construction Management Professor Maryam Kouhirostami
Kouhirostami describes how offsite construction brings many advantages such as “reducing costs, reducing time, reducing the carbon footprint of a residential building, and generally helping our residential industry to grow faster, providing more housing and combating the housing shortage.”
The first year of the competition is focused on design with the help of architecture and landscape architecture students, with the second year advancing to focus on construction. The design process has played out across a construction management class, a fourth-year design studio, and a fifth-year thesis.
Kouhirostami talks about the benefits of a larger culture of interdisciplinary collaboration within the College of Architecture and Environmental Design: “I was really fortunate to have the opportunity of being in a college like this, in which we have five different majors. So far, we have had classes in the CM [Construction Management] and architecture departments, through architecture studios and CM independent study.
Their final product will be filled with interdisciplinary collaboration, even literally, with plans to work with the Vellum Furniture Competition to find pieces to furnish their unit.
Once the design is complete, the Gateway Decathlon team plans to rent out a parking lot on campus in Fall 2024 to begin constructing their prototype. Construction is expected to take about a year, finishing in September 2025, in time for a four-week-long event in St. Louis for judging, presenting and exhibiting.
Caption: CAED students visiting the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri
With teams from across the nation and around the world, Kouhirostami sees this as a “valuable opportunity for Cal Poly to showcase our Learn by Doing approach and compete at such a high level.”
To follow the team’s progress, check out @calpolyslogwd on Instagram and the Cal Poly Gateway Decathalon website.
