Housing affordability has become one of the defining pressure points of the global cost-of-living crisis. Construction costs account for over 60% of the average price of a new home in the US. In California, the cost of building a single apartment routinely exceeds $500,000, which may be driven by labor rates or a supply chain designed more for profit margins than for people. When that gap widens, so does the gap between what is needed and what is attainable.
Albert Sawano, AIA, of Synchronis, believes that existing solutions have often focused on scaling output through industrialized production of modular buildings. “The idea has been to build factories, increase volume, and drive unit cost through repetition,” he explains. Yet, he observes that this approach has repeatedly struggled to sustain long-term viability, particularly when demand fluctuates. He points to large-scale modular attempts, in which case high fixed overheads and dependency on continuous throughput destabilize operations instead.
A parallel challenge sits within traditional site-built construction. Sawano highlights that wood framing remains dominant in many markets due to familiarity and cost accessibility, yet he argues that it carries inherent limitations. Those limitations, he notes, extend to maintenance cycles, fire susceptibility, and comparatively shorter structural lifespans, which may place long-term economic pressure on owners. He further points to regions facing environmental volatility, where those constraints can become more pronounced over time.
Synchronis approaches this tension by championing a fundamentally different architecture of production. Sawano highlights that the model splits construction across two sites: a local site where the building will stand, and a remote fabrication site, currently based in Turkey, where sections of the final building are manufactured on a project-by-project basis, then transported for installation.
“There is no factory overhead, no production floor running between commissions, no pressure to fill capacity. Each build is treated as its own closed system,” Sawano says.
Sawano frames this as an extension of traditional construction logic. “It is essentially construction split across geographies,” he adds. According to him, the economic advantage emerges through labor arbitrage, where lower production costs in overseas fabrication, combined with optimized logistics, can offset transportation and assembly costs. The target, for Sawano, is to deliver homes at a considerably lower construction cost.
He indicates that internal benchmarks are currently targeting 80 percent of conventional construction costs. According to Sawano, variables such as freight costs, tariff fluctuations, and localized labor inputs continue to influence final pricing.
In his view, the model avoids traditional cost-cutting measures by reorganizing the production environment itself, allowing higher-grade materials and controlled fabrication to exist within a more efficient financial framework.
Steel and concrete form the material backbone of the system. Sawano emphasizes their long-term performance profile, pointing to durability and incombustibility as core design drivers. He explains that the intent is not minimal compliance but structural longevity, with buildings engineered for extended service life horizons that can exceed conventional residential standards by decades.
Furthermore, design flexibility is maintained through a dual structure of standardization and customization. Sawano explains that exterior dimensions are standardized so that transport efficiency and logistical consistency are maintained. Interior design, however, is entirely bespoke. Each module can be uniquely arranged, allowing spatial layouts, finishes, and functional requirements to reflect the individual client.
The deeper driver behind all of this, Sawano notes, was never the price. A proponent of first principles thinking, he reflects, “the ethic driving it is really about how to do it better and allowing efficiency to flow from that intent.” His departure from conventional architectural practice was not a pivot toward cost optimization, but rather a rejection of building minimum viable structures. Affordability, he adds, is the consequence of genuinely rethinking the process.
The model also engages directly with global supply chain dynamics. He sees manufacturing in Turkey as an exposure to trade policy shifts and tariff variability. Sawano points to current conditions as manageable within the broader cost structure, while recognizing the sensitivity of globally distributed production systems to geopolitical change.
He highlights that industry partnerships, including large-scale fabrication from Dorce and construction management by Turner Construction’s European operations, form part of their delivery ecosystem.
Future exploration includes potential expansion into additional fabrication geographies, with Vietnam discussed as a possible contender, alongside selective US locations for institutional projects. Sawano highlights that these developments will extend the same two-site logic into different scales of infrastructure demand.
Throughout the development of the system, Sawano maintains that a central perspective has remained consistent: “If the goal is to build something that performs better over time, the method has to evolve with it.” Within that context, he believes that as cost pressures intensify and expectations around longevity become more defined, approaches that rethink how buildings are delivered will gain traction.
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