The Lange family has been crafting millwork for decades in the Thurston Woods neighborhood. Now its offspring, LUSH (Lange Urban Sustainable Homes) hopes to be part of the solution to Milwaukee's housing challenges.
Founder RJ Lange walks me through his family’s shop on West Douglas Avenue. It’s humming with activity.
“If we come down here, this is where the two CNC machines are,” Lange says.
One after another, three-quarter-inch thick sheets of plywood are loaded onto the machine. It’s programmed to precisely cut every element of a LUSH home.
Every component of the home’s plywood skeleton is created to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle — a super sturdy one.
Lange says no nails or glue are required. All it takes is a few people, rubber mallets and some crowbars to assemble the homes.
Take LUSH’s 6-by-12 inch beams. Lange says they lock together with what’s called a spider jig.
“Essentially, it has a bunch of little tabs on the corners of each piece so that when you snap on the plywood on all four sides, if the wood shifts to the left or right, the one tab catches it. If it moves up and down, it catches the other,” Lange says.
The beam system creates extra-thick 12-inch walls, floors and roofs, “Which gives us that structural strength,” Lange says.
Across the shop floor, Chris Clough pulls up a 3D image of a LUSH home on his computer.
“That gives us the ability to do a lot of the quality control. So, 99% of it is taken care of even before we make a part,” he says.
Clough worked construction for years before joining LUSH three years ago. He also runs the CNC machine.
“I come from a background of building homes, so I’d never seen anything like this or even thought of anything like this. I mean, if somebody tried to tell me they could build a house out of plywood, I would tell them you’re crazy,” Clough says.
Lange family business goes back decades
The Lange family is pretty new to home design. But their business has a long history.
When it began in Thurston Woods in the 1930s, the Langes were toymakers. They later produced wooden crates for Coca-Cola.
When World War II broke out, the Langes built bunkbeds and lockers for the Army.
Now Lange Bros. Woodwork Co. turns out high-end architectural millwork — cabinets and such — for homes and commercial buildings.
What brought LUSH to life? The pandemic meets resourcefulness.
The fifth generation, RJ Lange, was a benefits consultant working with a group that was exploring building housing for veterans. At Lange Bros, business had quieted to a whisper.
RJ and his dad, who co-owns Lange Bros. with his sister, learned about a European model called Wikihouse.
In early 2023, they went to Amsterdam to see the affordable homes constructed of plywood components. The Netherlands group has built hundreds of Wikihouses, showing there is demand for the durable, easy-to-build homes.
“We went over there to try to learn from them and we ended out sharing a lot of information and improvements to them. That’s where we started to realize that we had was something special and unique,” Lange says.
Easy-to-build, energy-efficient homes
That led to experimentation — from a prototype to a 100-square-foot structure and eventually a house under construction blocks away from the family shop.
“We’re here on 39th Street and Thurston. This is our second house we’re building on this block,” Lange says. Four days earlier, “You only would have seen a cement slab here and today we’re standing in front of a fully closed-in 2,000-square-foot house. We have our windows in and the roof is on it."
It will hold three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The front door opens into a 500-square-foot kitchen, dining and living room space.
The building has no load-bearing walls or extra beams needed to support the roof, allowing for “an 18-foot vaulted ceiling and it’s just really open and has a good inviting vibe,” Lange says.
The thick-beamed system allows for more energy efficient insulation than traditionally constructed homes.
Pre-cut holes throughout the framework allow for faster electrical, plumbing and HVAC installation.
“You can see in between the joists, we have typically three holes in the system. So an electrician or plumber doesn’t have to spend half of their time prepping the site. They can simply come in here and start running pipe and electrical,” Lange says.
It shows it’s possible to build homes in a different way than we’ve traditionally done it.
The 2,000-square-foot starter home cost $275,000 to build, including touches like milled Lange cabinetry and hardwood engineered flooring. The roof is solar-ready.
Lange envisions what’s taking shape in Thurston Woods as a piece of Milwaukee’s housing solution.
“Nothing was built here for 40 years, and now we’ve built three structures at this point and we own the last few remaining lots. So, by the end of 2026 there should be no vacant lots in the Thurston Woods neighborhood,” he says.
“That’s the kind of innovation we need in the housing space to figure out how to do things faster, better, greener to bring down costs in the long run," says Teig Whaley-Smith. "And I think LUSH has a head start on that part of the equation.”
Whaley-Smith heads the Community Development Alliance, or CDA. It’s focused on bringing people together to create quality, affordable homes in a racially equitable way.
He says in its short lifetime, LUSH has already influenced the local affordable housing scene.
Last year, the CDA received a Mayor’s Design Award for advancing three affordable home models. One was LUSH’s energy-efficient home.
“We strongly believe that advanced building construction needs to be part of the housing ecosystem. And so we’re so excited that LUSH is in the 30th Street Corridor, has the construction facility and the factory already done so you don’t have to make that investment, and is adapting their tools and techniques to actually build housing,” Whaley-Smith says.
But the price is still out of reach for many would-be buyers. He says the average Milwaukeean can afford a $120,000 to $150,000 home.
“But it can cost you $250,000 to $300,000 to build it. So, we have to figure out how to build homes that people can afford on the front end and can maintain them,” Whaley-Smith says.
For now, LUSH is in conversation with CDA and other local affordable housing partners to help address the need for sustainable homes for Milwaukee residents.
RJ Lange thinks there’s plenty of room to build homes more efficiently and those efficiencies can drive prices down to match the amount families can afford to pay, “[And] people are getting new houses that are high-quality and energy-efficient,” Lange says.
He hopes to mentor local emerging developers along the way.
“We’re looking to train and develop local people to create local jobs and then local business owners that can then build these LUSH homes, so we’re just trying to revitalize these neighborhoods to get the ball rolling and then let it go from there,” Lange says.
He believes contractors will adopt the approach when they see construction is faster and high quality.
Lange says next week, Milwaukee’s mayor is planning to visit the LUSH factory and one of its Thurston Woods homes.
Support for Seeking Solutions: Keys to Homeownership is provided by Educators Credit Union, Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors and Geis Garage Doors.
