Trilobite Design

07/06/2026

Cincinnati's BuildReady design competition closes Friday, August 14. Two-, three-, and four-unit middle housing entries become pre-approved plans, funded by a $2 million HUD grant.

This pattern book will become the baseline of what gets built in Cincinnati for the next decade. Worth following or joining in.

We're big fans of infill development and more housing, so this can be a way to unlock more options in the city.

City officials say the goal is to inspire innovative ideas with a long-term goal of creating pre-approved design plans for two-, three- and four-unit housing.

06/29/2026

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act cleared both chambers of Congress this week on bipartisan votes of 85 to 5 in the Senate and 358 to 32 in the House, after which the President responded by cancelling the signing ceremony. The kind of administrative gesture whose meaning depends on which corner of the room you happen to be standing in.
Tucked into the bill is a federal framework for point-access housing up to six stories, HUD-funded pilot grants for single-stair multifamily projects, and a new set of restrictions on institutional purchases of single-family homes. On a Cincinnati infill lot, a single-stair six-story building could be a phenomenal way to unlock more affordable and sustainable development options.

President Trump canceled a signing ceremony for the bill Wednesday, saying Congress must first pass a strict voter ID bill.

04/27/2026

Cincinnati's first certified Passive House measured 7 kBtu per square foot per year before onsite generation. Neighbors on the same Mt Airy block use seven to ten times that.

A new post on the Trilobite blog walks through how. Three principles: airtight, insulated, well ventilated. The physics of heat pumps and ERVs. Where Pretty Good House reaches excellence and where Passive House pushes further.
For homeowners considering a new build or a deep retrofit.

https://trilobitedesign.com/pretty-good-house-and-passive-house-explained/

04/24/2026

A few musings about sustainability on Earth Day.

Earth Day – Your Home Is The Lever 2026-04-222026-04-22 by Scott Hand Eighty Years of Operating Energy. The house you build will operate for eighty years, at least. The car you buy next month will be on the road for twelve. Of the choices a household makes about its environmental footprint, the bu...

04/15/2026

Sometime around the 1970s, America forgot how to build cities. We froze our neighborhoods in amber. We stopped experimenting with new housing types and vibrant infrastructure, and instead trapped ourselves in an endless loop of building the exact same things: freeways, downtown office towers, and sprawling single-family subdivisions.

If you want to understand the entire development mentality behind Trilobite Design, you will want to read Benjamin Schneider’s incredible new book, The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution. It is practically a thesis for our entire practice.

Schneider argues that "city-building is a lost art." He points out that the urban landscape isn't just a backdrop; it determines the kind of life you are able to live. Our current housing crisis, our dependence on cars, and our fraying communities are the direct result of clinging to these outdated 20th-century development patterns.

This is exactly why we are so relentless about pushing for systemic improvements. The need for Single-Stair mid-rises and urban infill isn't just a design trend, it is the literal toolkit we need to revive the lost art of city-building. I look out the window of the Trilobite office in Northside every day and see exactly what Schneider is talking about. This neighborhood is vibrant because it was built before we made this kind of density illegal. It's time to legalize Northside-style development citywide.

Cities are never truly "finished." They must breathe and evolve lot by lot. Schneider's book is a brilliant reminder of what happens when we stop dreaming, and a roadmap for how we can start again. Highly recommend picking this one up!

04/13/2026

The new ROAD to Housing Act is forcing large institutional investors to sell their rental subdivisions to individual homeowners within 7 years. The era of designing "apartments on the ground" is over.

At Trilobite Design, we aren't scrambling to adjust our site plans, because we never bought into the extractive corporate model. We build bespoke ecovillages and missing middle infill. Our projects are fee-simple by design from Day One.

True neighborhood vitality requires the opportunity for ownership and neighborhood character. The federal rules have finally caught up to our philosophy.

If you're planning a community and need an exit strategy that actually builds local wealth, let's talk.
https://trilobitedesign.com/the-build-to-rent-pivot-why-our-new-subdivisions-need-an-exit-strategy/

04/08/2026

What good is designing a walkable, beautiful Missing Middle neighborhood if the walk to the grocery store gets you killed?

We’ve been talking a lot about changing the math of housing in Cincinnati: legalizing Point Access Blocks, utilizing the ROAD Act, and building high-performance eco-districts. But as architects, we have to admit something: fixing the buildings isn't enough if we don't fix the streets.

I recently finished Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America by Angie Schmitt, and it is a gut-punch of a read.

Schmitt expertly breaks down how the massive spike in pedestrian deaths isn't about distracted walkers or jaywalking. It is a predictable crisis caused by systemic inequality and a built environment that prioritizes the speed of SUVs over human life. If you want a local example of what Schmitt is talking about, just look at the history of Liberty Street in OTR. We literally bulldozed the center of our most walkable neighborhood to build a 7-lane mini-highway for cars. Fixing our buildings means fixing mistakes like that.

At Trilobite Design, this is exactly why we constantly fight to abolish parking minimums and prioritize transit-oriented infill. You cannot build a human-scaled eco-district if every piece of architecture is forced to defer to the automobile.

04/06/2026

If you're tired of seeing the same block-swallowing, uninspired 5-over-1 apartment buildings popping up in every neighborhood, I have good news: The math is finally changing. 🏗️

At Trilobite Design, we know that bad architecture is rarely a lack of imagination, it's a byproduct of outdated building codes. Specifically, the "double-loaded corridor" mandate.

The new ROAD to Housing Act is finally giving us the green light to build Point Access Blocks (Single-Stair mid-rises). This is how we kill the 5-over-1 monolith and return to fine-grain, bespoke urban infill that actually fits on our historic infill Cincinnati lots.

No more dark hallways. Better floor plans. True cross-ventilation.

We break down the architectural math in our latest blog post. Let’s build better cities. 👇
https://trilobitedesign.com/the-end-of-the-5-over-1-monolith-why-the-single-stair-revolution-is-the-key-to-better-housing/