Ivory Innovations

Ivory Prize 2021 Winner Announcement

2021 Ivory Prize Winners


2021 Construction & Design Co-Winner
- BamCore

Windsor, California

Since April 2020, “unprecedented spikes in lumber prices have added more than $24,000 to the price of the average, new single-family home, and nearly $9,000 to the price of a multifamily home,” according to the National Home builders Association. BamCore’s innovative bamboo-based framing solution has the potential to address this crippling rise in material costs, provide a more climate positive supply chain, reduce the need for skilled labor and speed up the build time by more than 50 percent, while producing a much more energy-efficient home.


2021 Construction & Design Co-Winner
- Curtis + Ginsberg Architects (C+GA)

New York City, New York

Often sustainability and affordability are competitive goals for housing development. However, C+GA is pioneering new approaches to break through the budgetary barriers that previously made building energy-efficient and affordable multifamily housing difficult. C+GA has designed the largest completed Passive House affordable housing building in the United States. Their primary strategy in designing energy-efficient Passive House standards is to reduce the operational cost of buildings, in turn, maintaining affordability long after a building is built, while providing healthier buildings for residents.


2021 Finance Winner
- Homeownership with Keep by Framework

Boston, massachusetts

Framework is a for-profit social enterprise that supports access to homeownership by widening access and closing knowledge gaps. Framework helps people understand the process of buying a home — every nuance, every expectation, every pathway.

Framework’s platform, previously delivered branded as the Keep by Framework app, helps home buyers understand the process to purchase a home and how best to maintain and stay in that home for the long term. With an emphasis on first-time, first-generation potential homeowners, Framework guides users through the entire process of purchasing a home, with a keen focus on assisting homebuyers confronting structural and persistent racial barriers and on democratizing the homebuying process.


2021 Public Policy/Regulatory Reform Winner
- Impact Justice / The Homecoming Project

Oakland, california

Thousands of Americans are not only priced out of affordable housing but are often intentionally left out of many housing options. The Homecoming Project is a program that ensures successful reentry back into communities by providing safe and stable housing and a welcoming host. Formerly incarcerated people are able to integrate more easily into the community by quick placement into stable housing right out of prison.