After Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and the surrounding area, a then resident Roi Maufas decided there had to be a better way to approach
housing. Equipped with a passion for people, housing and the environment, Gorilla Design was formed. The idea was massive yet simple; create a
new type of home that better addressed the challenges of the 21st century.
This next generation home needed to take into account a range of important issues such as natural resource depletion, alternative forms of energy
as well as generally being more environmentally conscious. These problems need to be resolved to help with the looming threat of Global Warming,
Peak Oil, U.S. dependence on foreign oil and rapidly filling landfills. The Gorilla Design home is designed to address these issues.
Roi Maufas put together a team that understands these issues and is passionate about finding solutions. This team includes Alyssa Kay, an
accomplished architect, among others. Together, they quickly began to create and test ideas around
energy efficiency, alternative energy sources, use of recycled materials and water-reuse.
Roi describes this journey, "Our solution was to rethink the box... to consider the way houses are built. We went back in time thousands of years
to learn how people have built homes since we left the caves. We looked at the qualities and principles of traditional building materials and
methods. We examined what it means to live in a home. Then we looked to the future and all the new technologies that could be integrated into
our homes to make them better, stronger, more efficient, more self-sustaining and most important, livable."