The PHNX Portfolio Homes Collection is Here

An introduction from Laurie Fisher, Architect, Founder & CEO

Street view of The Esther - one of our new PHNX Portfolio Homes™ Collection designs

I founded PHNX after the 2017 Tubbs Fire, having spent two years working with five Santa Rosa families through their rebuilds. I realized quickly why mass-market builders weren’t there rebuilding alongside them. Every fire-loss property is different, different slopes, soils, setbacks, orientations, and that variability makes their model unworkable. Their economics depend on identical, flat, predictable lots.

But the challenge wasn’t only logistical. Survivors were being asked to design and build a home from scratch - a process that’s demanding under any circumstances. All while grieving, managing insurance claims, and while traumatized. Furthermore, whatever got built had to be noncombustible, net-zero, and designed to last. Rebuilding homes that can burn again, that are vulnerable to power outages, and that perpetuate the same cycle that causes fires in the first place isn’t resilience. It’s repetition while expecting a different outcome. The only real answer was custom design for every property, and I set out to find a design methodology that could deliver all those things and make the process easier for fire survivors to navigate.

What I was looking for, from the beginning, was a third way: not the rigid repetition of mass-market construction, and not the open-ended uncertainty of a fully bespoke process. Something that offered the clarity and confidence of a pre-designed home, a known aesthetic, a known structure, and a known price range - while remaining genuinely adaptable to the realities of any given lot and any given family.

That required a structural system that could do something wood framing fundamentally cannot: span wide and clean, without interior load-bearing walls dictating where rooms could or couldn’t go. The patent-pending PHNX Longspan™ Structural System is that answer. The Portfolio Collection is what Longspan™ has made possible: four homes that are modular in design — not construction — and therefore fully customizable.

The Portfolio Collection is also a direct expression of our trauma-informed design practice. Survivors told us, over and over, what made the process harder than it needed to be: the open-ended budget, the inability to see the outcome before committing to it, the feeling of starting from nothing. A pre-designed home gives them a place to begin; something to react to, refine, and make their own.

Today we’re launching four homes: The Esther, a side-by-side single-family plan open from front to back, scaling from two to four bedrooms without significantly changing the footprint. The Harriet, a flippable plan available in two orientations with an optional fully accessible configuration. The Reilly, a side-by-side duplex combining a three-bedroom family home with an attached fully independent one-bedroom residence. And The Greta, our 770 SF ADU, built to exactly the same Type I noncombustible standard as every home PHNX builds. Each is named for a woman who shaped Southern California in architecture, letters, or design during an era when that wasn’t easy.

The full catalog and 360° virtual tours are at phnxdevelopment.com/portfolio-collection. If you’re ready to start a conversation, we’re easy to find and we’ll meet you where you are.

Welcome to PHNX.

PHNX Development is a Licensed CA Contractor building noncombustible, net-zero custom homes in California. Our founder, Laurie C. Fisher, is a Registered California architect with 25+ years of experience and the creator of the patent-pending PHNX Longspan™ Structural System.