In February, the Fellows of the Forum donned heavy jackets for a crisp nighttime tour of the Capsys Plant at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Capsys is a renowned manufacturer of modular housing, specializing in hotels, multifamily housing, supportive housing, assisted living facilities rising as high as 13 stories.

Tom O’Hara, Director of Business Development, guided the Fellows around Capsys’s unique assembly line where housing units are built from concrete floor to gypsum ceiling and finished with electrical and plumbing systems. Once completed, units are shipped to the construction site and stacked, often cutting total construction time in half.

But will modular truly be the future of construction in New York City? Mr. O’Hara speculated it could eventually comprise only 30% of new housing, but that more traditional methods would continue to dominate.

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Photo Credit: Capsys Corp.