Fabprefab

WIRED has begun to take an interest in architecture of late. Beginning in January 2006, it began to feature a section based on architecture, and in this issue, they introduce Prefab housing. This was begun decades ago, but Michelle Kaufman, a 37 year-old architect from San Francisco started to take it in a new direction less than a decade ago. Prefab housing refers to houses built on the assembly line and transported on-site to be assembled into their finished state. One of these houses, custom made, costs about of $200 a square foot, which is less expensive then the $3-400 per square foot you would pay for some homes in LA. They are also more energy efficient, and do in fact adhere to all building codes, perhaps even exceed them, as the sections need to survive the trip to the site, already fully produced.

What is now being transformed into custom made housing for the elite has roots that go back decades. One of its predecessors consisted of housing units that were brought along the railways and set up as temporary homes for miners and other workers in the heart of nature in the Rockies, where the only way to house the workers was to bring the homes in on the train. Some of these “communities” still stand, and can be seen along the Sea to Sky Highway on the way to Whistler from Vancouver. In their first article on the topic, WIRED cites that as early as “1906, the Aladdin Company was dropping factory-made Readi-Cut house kits in the US mail.”

Kaufman took this housing in a more elite direction when she built the first “Glidehouse” for herself in 2002, which would give her the green features and “modern aesthetic” that the million dollar mansions lacked. She approached Britco, a company who already manufactured these units en masse to ship to housing developments, and proposed the first custom made house to them. They accepted the challenge of creating this style of housing for the elite; clients who can afford, and actually request, these houses to be built for them. They are beginning to appear along the West Coast from California up to Canada, and in various other states. Prefab housing in its traditional assembly line style is also used, like Britco’s current project, as temporary housing units set-up for oil riggers in the tar sands region of Alberta, or other communities that attract workers to temporarily live long enough to complete their jobs. They are also more ecological in their production process; pieces can be ordered in bulk, and excess material from one unit is simply taken off the line of one second, and put back on when it comes to the next piece.

If this type of housing is so much easier to build why has this always been the lowest end solution? Why have our communities been filled with brick and mortar homes, when better, more sustainable “point and click” solutions also existed? In the late 1940s, there were already over 200,000 in the US alone, so states WIRED. One dead weight in the industry seems to be the negative connotation of prefab housing. This type of housing has traditionally been used in poor areas and trailer parks, and built using what Kaufman calls “substandard code”. Even stronger than that is the stigma that this housing faces from those in the position of building the homes. Some municipal governments zone against it, and many contractors hold their trades in very high regard, and feel it would be insulting to leave behind their trades to work on a factory line. That would be one element of traditional housing I thoroughly agree with. If the US had embraced this kind of housing a century ago, those people would not exist today. They would be of a completely different mindset, and may still have found their niche in construction, but just from a slightly different angle. If the government had endorsed prefab much earlier, we may be advanced enough be now to create prefab buildings and condos, as well.

Architects, Bauhaus founders, and professors alike have all endorsed this method of housing, including Walter Gropius, who would have no doubt pushed it as a functional, practical design solution, pared down to the very basics. Frank Gehry was Kaufman’s inspiration for her work, as she trained with Gehry for half a decade before beginning to emphasize quality and “designability” of this kind of housing. Avi Friedman, an architecture professor at McGill, has also spotted this trend, and is promoting it with positive predictions for future use in the housing industry. Kaufman promotes this style of housing to the elite as giving the owner the ability to customize their house piece-by-piece, an empowering alternative to the choice of “would you like a chrome, maple, or marble kitchen with that? And what kind of molding?

Prefab housing is beginning to look better and better. About 5-10% of future housing in the US will be built using this style of construction, and about 10% of that market will be of the custom-made elite style. The early tides of devotees are now opening up to a larger audience, interested in the green features and economics of this type of housing as much as anything else. From their style and customization, to their financial and environmental costs, Prefab housing looks like the perfect designer model for building homes in the future.

For more details on this type of housing, visit www.Fabprefab.com.