UC Merced Promise Housing

An exemplar of sustainable student housing, the new all-electric Promise Housing project utilizes a hybrid mass timber structure and adds 478 affordable beds to campus. Atelier Ten guided the project’s environmental strategy, helping advance its LEED Platinum target and ensure that low-carbon design principles shaped the project from the outset.

UC Merced has committed to achieving carbon neutrality in its campus operations, and Promise Housing reflects this ambition. The project’s mass timber hybrid structure was selected to significantly reduce embodied carbon and contribute to occupant well-being. Early collaboration allowed mass timber to be integrated as a core structural strategy, improving both environmental performance and construction efficiency. As a result, the building is expected to achieve a 58% reduction in embodied carbon from the baseline when the sequestration benefits of the timber structure are factored. By integrating mass timber early-on, the project stayed within budget, achieved a 30% shorter construction schedule and required a quarter of the construction crew than a typical steel and concrete structure building.

Atelier Ten’s energy modeling informed the design of a highly efficient, all-electric building. Before photovoltaics, the building achieves a 55% energy reduction. With the integration of a 200-kW PV array, the project is projected to reduce energy by over 74% compared to a baseline. To achieve these energy savings, the building incorporates a high-performance envelope with solar shading and operable windows, heat-pump heating and cooling, CO2 heat-pump DHW, as well as energy star appliances in dorm rooms.

Student wellness was the major driver for the project. In addition to emphasizing healthy materials, the project optimizes daylight to support visual and thermal comfort. External shading distributes daylight while reducing glare into the apartment units. Glazing was carefully sized to provide abundant daylight while maintaining comfortable indoor temperatures in the living and sleeping areas. The combination of the room layout and façade design provides useful, even daylight to the bedroom area.