About us
Plugin House Company is a collaboration between social-impact-minded developer Anmol Mehra and architect James Shen, principal of People’s Architecture Office (PAO), an international, multi-disciplinary design practice. Having grown up in immigrant families, both recognize the setbacks that result from a lack of safe, affordable, and stable housing.
The two met at Harvard University—James was a Loeb Fellow developing design strategies for prefabricated affordable housing; Anmol was studying housing policy after a 15-year career in finance. Together James and Anmol envisioned the Plugin House’s modular low-cost design and turnkey services as a way to help tackle the housing crises facing many cities, and to provide relief to populations struggling with homelessness or displacement.
James Shen (left) and Anmol Mehra at Austin Design Week, 2021.
Anmol Mehra has developed over 20 residential housing projects in Austin and Boston, with over half benefiting underserved groups. He has partnered with the City of Austin and other local groups on two projects that resulted in zoning changes, increasing density and affordability. Anmol graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government with a Masters in Public Administration, and also holds an MBA from McCombs School of Business. He sits on the boards of several organizations focused on food justice and arts in the public sphere.
James Shen is Principal and Founding Partner of People’s Architecture Office (PAO) based in Beijing and Los Angeles. He grew up in California and studied product design, before going on to earn his Masters of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Shen has been a Loeb Fellow at Harvard, a Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, and an Innovation Fellow at MIT’s China Future City Lab. He has taught at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
Plugin’s origins.
James Shen and his team at People’s Architecture Office originally conceived the Plugin system in 2013 as a strategy to upgrade dilapidated neighborhoods in China. Rather than demolishing old buildings and relocating residents, PAO invented a system for building a “house within a house, ” leaving the original structures intact. They later expanded its applications to include extensions, urban infill, and rural housing. The low cost and highly customizable system has brought superior living standards to disadvantaged households in difficult to access locations. Since 2013, PAO has built over 60 Plugin Houses.
Plugin House, Shangwei Village rehabilitation, Shenzhen, China.