Visit Your local Architecture School’s library to look at These Three Out of Print ‘PreFab’ Books
Wachsmann, The Turning Point of Building: Structure and Design, Reinhold Publishing, 1961
Jandl, Burns & Auer, Yesterday’s Houses of Tomorrow: Innovative American Homes 1850-1950, Preservation Press, 1991
Benedikt and Steinegger, Jean Prouve: Prefabrication, Structures and Elements, Pall Mall Press, 1971
Market Segments of PreFab Products (listed from least to most on-site labor)
Manufactured Homes (5% of prefab market): built entirely in a factory, usually referred to as HUD-Code or Mobile Homes
Modular Homes (7% of prefab market): 70-85% factory built and shipped to site for completion
Panelized Homes (45% of prefab market): constructed with factory-built panels for whole walls
Pre-Cut Homes (included in the panelized home percentage): kit homes, log homes, and dome homes
Production Builders (43% of prefab market): use factory fabricated roof trusses and other components
Four Magazines You Probably Don’t Read
Building Systems Magazine
Automated Builder
Manufactured Home Merchandiser
Modern Homes Development
Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller on PreFab Structures
“Conventional mobile homes are in effect extruded through tunnels and bridges, which restricts their size and shape.”
Courtesy of Jay Baldwin, CCA Industrial Design Faculty
Recent Downtrend of Manufactured Housing Units (annual US production figures)
1998 | 350,000 (peak)
2005 | 146,000 (including FEMA-Katrina bump of 17,000)
Five largest US Factory-Built Home Manufacturers
CMH Manufacturing (TN)
Champion Enterprises (Mil
Palm Harbor Homes (TX)
Fleetwood Enterprises (CA)
Skyline Corporation (IN)
Price to Purchase Plans for a Lowe’s Katrina Cottage
$700
www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=pg&p=2006_landing/Katrina_Cottage/KatrinaCottage.html
Bucky’s Dymaxion Wichita House
Weighed and cost the same per pound as a 1946 Cadillac limo (6,000 lbs) and, like a car, was meant to be paid off in five years
Courtesy of Jay Baldwin, CCA Industrial Design Faculty
First Mail Order Kit Homes
Sears Roebuck & Co., which sold houses through its catalogs and sales offices to nearly 100,000 clients between 1908 and 1940. Priced from $650 to S2,500, each “Houses by Mail” kit included lumber, nails, shingles, windows, doors, hardware, and house paint.
From PREFAB, by Allison Arieff and Bryan Burkhart, Gibbs Smith, 2002.
Your Tax Dollars at Work
Everything you ever wanted to know about Prefab and other housing types:
www.pathnet.org (Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing)
www.toolbase.org (Technical information on products, materials, technologies, and housing systems)
Originally published 4th quarter 2007 in arcCA 07.4, “preFABiana.”
