November 13 was moving day at the DesignBuild Site at UMass Amherst—which means that three giant flat-bed trucks and three enormous tow trucks, plus a crane and a crew of a dozen hard-hatted operators to manage it, were ready for work. Instead of people moving into a house, though, moving day for the undergraduate and graduate DesignBuild students means lifting the small, high-performance, high-efficiency house they built over the course of a year off its blocks, hoisting it 40 feet in the air, placing it gently on those flatbeds, driving it down to its final resting place in Holyoke, and then putting it back together so that it can become the permanent home of one of the many Holyokers currently facing housing insecurity.
 

The students name each house they build, and this one is called Casita de Vida.

“I’m very anxious,” says Bianca Saliba De Assis, a senior majoring in Building and Construction Technology who helped hang the drywall, test the electrical wiring and install siding and floors. “I hope the house makes it onto the trailer safely. We worked overtime to get this house done, and it has been really rewarding.”

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Casita de Vida is the fourth house that UMass Amherst’s DesignBuild students built, and the first time that the program collaborated with Habitat for Humanity. 

The first house, named the Hygge House, was finished in 2022, the second, Paper House, in 2023, with the third, Eighth Sister, in 2024. They are all are now in Holyoke, owned by OneHolyoke CDC, a non-profit that is working to solve the housing crisis in the Paper City by making it possibly for low-income residents to own their own safe, well-built, energy-efficient homes.

At a recent open house to showcase both Hygge and Paper houses, dozens of locals stopped by to inquire about everything from the efficiency of the mini-split units that heat and cool the houses to the details of ownership. “We’ve figured out how to sell brand-new homes at a deep discount so that people who never would have otherwise been able to become homeowners can do so,” says Mike Moriarty, OneHolyoke’s president and director.

Georgianna Brown,’24, OneHolyoke’s community engagement fellow, chimes in that several dozen people have expressed interest in purchasing the two houses.

Back at Amherst, the DesignBuild students let out a cheer when the crane lifted the roof off the newest house, the 640-square-foot Casita de Vida. Omer Mian, a senior who graduated in December, 2025, spoke of how fulfilling it was to partner with Habitat for Humanity in Holyoke to find the right family for the house he and his classmates built. “We have a bigger mission of helping to provide a forever home for folks who have been housing insecure. This was a hands-on learning experience; I got to do the light frame work and roofing, and I was there when we revealed the house to the family who is going to move into it.”

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Carl Fiocchi, a senior lecturer and professional master’s program coordinator in the Building and Construction Technology Program who launched the DesignBuild program five years and four houses ago, said that seeing another one get hoisted onto a trailer for delivery is a little like “sending your kid off to college.” Fiocchi, who ran his own contracting business for 29 years before coming to UMass Amherst, notes that, traditionally “a builder might go through their whole education and never see the work involved in designing a house. The reverse is true for architects, too, who might never get any experience actually building their designs.”

The DesignBuild course, a joint effort between the Building and Construction Technology Program (BCT) and Department of Architecture at UMass Amherst and the Five College Architectural Studies program, seeks to bridge this gap between the builders and designers with a two-semester sequence. In the spring semester, students are given a set of design parameters—the house’s overall footprint, budget, materials, etc.—and with those in place, design the building and produce construction documents which will direct the construction. Then, in a twelve-week summer session, they build the house. “The program is a happy medium between swinging hammers and drawing things,” says Ben Leinfelder, DesignBuild’s construction manager and lecturer in BCT.

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“We’re one of only a half-dozen programs in the U.S. that offers this opportunity at the advanced level of delivering a high performance, low carbon residence,” says Fiocchi, “and employers compete fiercely for our graduates because they know UMass Amherst’s DesignBuild students have a hands-on, comprehensive view of everything that goes into turning an idea for a house into a home that you can live in.”

“DesignBuild is the perfect example of what UMass Amherst does best,” says UMass Amherst’s Chancellor Javier Reyes, who celebrated with the DesignBuild staff and students when they revealed Casita de Vida to its new owners. “Our students receive a peerless, interdisciplinary, hands-on education, get the opportunity to give back to the community, and address one of the most pressing issues of our time all while gaining the skills that will jumpstart their professional careers.” 

Fiocchi adds that none of this would be possible without the corporate sponsors that have given so generously to DesignBuild. From low-carbon insulation and triple-glazed, high efficiency windows to tens of thousands of dollars of tools, building materials and fixtures, local companies have been partners in helping to make sure that a UMass Amherst education solves local problems.

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Christine Jablonski and Johanna Hodge, both of DOC, a longstanding Holyoke-based construction company, attended the opening of Hygge and Paper houses and said, “DOC is proud to support projects that create real value for the community. Being able to contribute to a project that addresses local needs—right here in our hometown—makes this work especially meaningful.”

“This all started for me when I was little and did small projects around the house with my grandfather, says De Assis, who hopes to go on to a career in residential construction. “I’m so proud of our work.”