arcCA asked sixteen authorities on prefabrication—some designers and producers, some critics and observers—to offer their current reflections on the industry. Here they are.
Modular house construction and variations, Deborah Berke and Partners.Notes on Prefabrication in the 1980s
Deborah Berke, AlA, founded New York City-based Deborah Berke & Partners Architects in 1982 and has taught at Yale since 1987. She is co-editor with Steven Harris of Architecture of the Everyday (1997), and Yale University Press will publish a book on her firm’s work next fall.
My particular attraction to prefabrication goes back to the late 1980s. In the heat of the moment, the ’80s seemed about only greed and consumption, overly big houses, and post-modernism’s architectural excesses. Compared to today’s greater excesses, those of the ’80s now seem understated and naive. But back then, those of us interested in a certain modesty of means were looking outside architecture not only for inspiration but for methods of production.
I was fortunate to get to work for a developer equally interested in these things, a husband/wife team committed to producing houses that were affordable to a broader audience. Together we went to factories where modular houses were being built- ugly houses, but they were built in places of stunning presence by processes that were compelling.
Most memorable was the factory that had been used for WWI I tank construction-a cavernous, multi-aisled brick hall with light from clerestory windows above cutting through the air thick with sheet rock dust, rendering the entire scene somehow ethereal. The units were lying on flatbed train cars, dwarfed by the huge, high ceiling, a cathedral of two by four modular construction. I was slack-jawed in appreciation of the splendor.
Often, manufactured housing looks cheap, and it has been stigmatized accordingly, but there is no reason for this. With the support of my client, I took on the design of a better-looking modular house that would appeal to his market. Mid-century modem had not yet again become fashionable. The goal was to make houses that would only reveal their method of construction to an informed observer and carry no stigma. The plans would be well thought out and would work for a variety of family (and non-family) structures. The limitations of modular construction would become formal opportunities.
Over the course of two years, we designed twelve models. They were designed in careful response to the deficiencies of the available factory- built product. In three categories of four models each-small, medium, and large-they were designed as generic American houses for the latter part of the twentieth century. To a potential owner, the plans functioned well; to an architect, the module of the “box” was the plan generator. Space was limited but made more expansive through axial alignments and visual connections-controlled entrance, room orientation, and spatial definition were important to this perception. The houses maintained the tradition of residential composition at a general scale without resorting to the application of non-functional items to evoke residential imagery. The production and operational efficiencies of these houses derived from the modular construction process, while their architectural integrity resulted from attention to the design of the house as a whole. Several of these houses were built before the market collapsed in 1991. It was and remains for me a critical exercise and a memorable, albeit thwarted, experience.
Is Not Is
Architect and educator Carol Burns, AlA, is a partner at Taylor & Burns Architects, a Boston-based firm focused on design for communities.
Techniques of industrialized mass production increasingly spread into the construction of all types of buildings. The “site-built” or “stick-built” house includes all sorts of mass produced elements, from wood studs to technologically- refined windows. Manufactured off site in mass quantities, these components can accurately be called “prefabricated.”
Nevertheless, the dominant mode of building delivery in the U.S. involves specialized trades working onsite as subcontractors to a general contractor. Labor costs account for more than material costs, creating impetus for exploring more capital-intensive techniques of industrialized production. Over the years, architects-along with developers, owners, and government agencies-have made repeated, systematic efforts to invent and work within alternative modes of delivery. Presently, single family homes (which comprise over ninety percent of housing in the U.S.) are produced according to various methods in different regions (see above.)
The word “prefab” is not an industry term, as are “modular home,· “manufactured home,· “panelized home,” or “site-built home.” In today’s popularizing usage, the term “prefab” seems more related to style–usually modernist—than to a method of construction. Among built homes recently featured under the prefab rubric, the majority are custom, one-off houses. The recent interest in prefab is, arguably, not aimed at addressing mass production (or even mass customization); it is another way to market modern style houses with a new twist, itself not a bad thing.
Style aside, I would like to argue for the potential benefit of continued efforts within the industry to build more environmentally sustainable houses. Modular and panelized industries have the potential to attain higher performance standards, as measured by the “green” yardstick.
One reason is that site-building produces more waste materials; for example, one-fourth the drywall in new residential construction goes to waste. Factory processes minimize waste: cutting equipment can be programmed to maximize use of each piece of wood, and leftover materials are typically recycled elsewhere in the process. Factory-built homes can be sealed and insulated better, due to inside-out access and alternative construction sequences. Many systems-built houses today exceed the federal EPA Energy Star requirements, and improved construction techniques can reduce long-term energy use as well as operating costs. Transportation costs for systems-built houses can be managed to consume less energy and cost than site-built construction. Warranties cover all aspects of a new home, most crucially mechanical systems, which are a main factor in high performance construction: local builders usually offer a one-year warranty, while modular manufacturers offer a ten-year limited warranty. With efficient factory production, systems-builders have the potential to deliver these benefits at a lower cost.
The images in the architectural press are not unlike the images in magazines at the supermarket check-out line: a way to stay informed of promotion machine chum. Improved delivery of more environmentally sound—and affordable—houses might not have the modernist appeal of Dwell, but if harnessed to mass production to affect a statistically significant portion of the housing market, just might make for better dwellings.
Deployable Foyer (Airlock) of Spacewalks for Next Generation Space Shuttle, FTL with Peter Hepple of Honeywell for NASA.What’s Out, What’s In
Todd Dalland, FAlA, cofounded FTL Design Engineering Studio in 1977. His design licenses for prefabricated buildings cumulatively represent billions of dollars in sales and annual royalties reaching seven figures. His new start-up with Robert Lerner and Tony Saxton, FTL Ventures, provides prefabrication architecture integrated with flexible photovoltaics.
Out
High-design architecture as unique building
Design concepts
Prefabrication as custom components of a building that are built in a shop
Ln-house model-making shop
Designing for one client at a time
Fee-based design office business model
Brochure and website for clients
Site specific design
Design credit
Owning a design office
Construction industry lawyers and accountants
Making a masterpiece once, per project
Scale
Hourly fees and expenses on the front end, no back end
Architect
BArch
Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Professional liability Insurance
AlA contracts
Familiar areas of design and construction
In
High-design architecture as unique, mass-produced buildings
Intellectual property
Prefabrication as high rate, mass-production of entire buildings
In-house proto-typing shop
Designing for thousands of clients at one time
Capital-based design manufacturing business model with assets sufficient to self-fund self-generated projects
Business plan for investors
Adaptable site design
Patents
Owning a factory with an integrated design office, proto-typing shop, and marketing and sales group
Securities industry business lawyers and accountants, intellectual property lawyers and patent attorneys
Making masterpieces thousands of times, per deal
Economy of scale
Sweat equity and investment operating capital on the front end, royalties, profit-sharing and equity on the back end
Design entrepreneur businessperson
BArch plus MBA
Dean Kamen, DEKA
Product Liability Insurance
Non-Disclosure Agreements, Letters of Intent, Licensing Agreements, and Distribution Agreements
Undiscovered areas of design, manufacturing, and business
Hersey House and Studio, Petaluma, CA, photo by Robert Hersey.Thirty Dollars a Square Foot
Robert H. Hersey, AlA, has a small architecture firm in Marin County. He has designed live/work and studio spaces for artists throughout the Bay Area, often using factory built components
1. Design
Thirty dollars a square foot was too good not to investigate further. That was the “rule of thumb” budget for a steel framed, small industrial building made by Butler Manufacturing Company. It would include concrete foundation and slab, clear span steel frame, exterior formed steel wall and roof sheathing, one ten-foot wide roll up door, and one “man” door. I was looking for a cost effective construction system with which to build a live work structure for my artist wife Susan and roe. This system looked good from the point of view of cost and the environment, as new steel contains recycled scrap material and is itself recyclable.
Working with CSB Construction in Oakland, a Butler recommended design/build contractor, we launched into this venture of creating residential and studio space with a system designed to shelter manufacturing and storage facilities. I would be the designer, CSB’s design and detailing staff would be my mentors.
The first discovery was that $30 buys only a Monopoly house-like shell on a rectangular slab. My initial designs, with plan offsets and multiple roof ridges to better tuck into a constrained site, were estimated at twice that. One lesson learned, I settled down to learning how to tweak the standard industrial details.
In the end, the only real changes we made to the “standards” were the openings. The $30 building has no windows. Heavily corrugated siding, which we used for its shadow creating profile, requires gross and often inelegant details at the heads and sills of windows and doors. So, I decided that all openings would run full height, slab to roof. The slab would form the sill, and the roof rake trim and rain gutter at the eaves would provide the head flashing. This system of openings, as it turned out, simplified the steel framing. The standard Butler is framed with horizontal “girths.” Any vertical opening will interrupt these girths. We handled the problem by installing 8″ deep steel channels at both jambs from slab to roof framing. They received the girths and carried the horizontal loads simply and directly to the slab and the roof framing system. Once cut into the standard shell, these openings were used for access, light, and ventilation. They were designed with doors at the bottom, hopper windows above them, and fixed glazing to the roof.
These slab-to-roof openings, designed to keep the system as standard and straightforward as possible, became the defining signature for the building and the only variation on the Monopoly block. The light that pours into the building is superb and is responsible for the singular quality of the interior spaces.
2. Construction
It took only a few days for the factory in Fresno to make the bents and cut and assemble the parts of the construction package, though there was a several month wait to get to that point. CSB planned on completing construction of the building shell in 15 working days; it took about 23, as they were delayed many days by rain.
CSB’s crew arrived at the site with truckloads of steel, insulated panels, and exterior metal sheathing on Friday, November 14th, after the slab had been poured and cured. Monday morning, the 17th, a crew of four with a heavy-duty forklift started erecting the frame. By the following Monday, the frame was up and insulation and siding materials were being applied. December 1st, the windows and doors were starting to be installed. The entire shell was dosed in and trimmed out by December 17th.
The winter was stormy, with twice the normal rainfall. Once we had the building enclosed, though, we had a dry work site. The lumber for the interior construction was delivered on the slab before the shell was complete. Not only were we protected from the elements, we had our supply of lumber in there with us.
3. Cost
Our total out-of pocket-expenses, excluding landscaping, garden structures, and the water and sewage systems, was $90 per square foot in current dollars. 1 acted as contractor on the job and spent a year working on it, which 1 figure would add another $18, for a total of $108 per square foot. Had it been contracted, overhead and profit at 20% would bring the total to about $130 in today’s dollars.
Part of the difference between that number and current square foot prices for custom construction lies in the simplified finishing system. The steel framework was left exposed on the interior, and so it seemed logical to leave most of the interior wood framing exposed. The COX plywood interior finish is typically installed on only one side of the studs. The four-foot high wainscot, a horizontal piece of plywood, is, however, installed on both sides to conceal most of the electrical and plumbing lines. The rough plywood was installed butt joint-to-butt joint and painted with two coats of semi-gloss enamel. The result is a textured but civilized finish that works well with the quasi-industrial esthetic.
4. Outlook
Features of the building’s construction type make it quite unlike other buildings. The full height windows were developed partially in response to how the steel framing and panel siding lay out. However, with no overhangs (another “standard” detail), they also invite the sky into the building. Combined with a row of skylights over the central gallery, they obviate the need for artificial lighting even in the cloudy, dark days of winter.
The siding and roofing panels, 2-1/2″ foam with integral interior metal skin and corrugated exterior steel panels, turn out to be quite acoustically transparent, with very little mass in that combination of materials. The sounds outside the building pass through the wall readily. Bird and animal sounds, the sound of wind and rain, horses whinnying, cows mooing, goats bleating are all there to be heard. Combined with the “sky” windows, this acoustic transparency makes the interior feel only lightly separated from the natural environment, protected and warm but still very in the “outdoors.” a pleasant and unexpected benefit of this system.
5. Data
Ground floor area: 3500 sq. ft.; lofts: 1000 sq. ft.; total: 4300 sq. ft.
Plan dimensions: 66 ft. long x 53 ft. wide; eave: 14ft.; ridge: 23 ft.
Radiant heating in concrete floor slab.
Thermal siphon ventilation activated by operable skylights in the gallery.
Restroom-in-a-box, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, Jensen & Macy Architects, photo courtesy of Jensen & Macy Architects.The Child’s Toy
Mark Jensen, AlA, is principal of Jensen Architects in San Francisco. He is the former Chair of the Interior Architecture Department at California College of the Arts (CCA) and is currently Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Headlands Center for the Arts.
There is an irrational exuberance around prefab. The volume of books, magazines, and evangelical architects dedicated to promoting this phenomenon is disproportionate to its accomplishments. The movement is not without appeal, but the real value of much of the work has little to do with its over-hyped claims. Cheaper? Faster? Not really, unless you are on a flat site in the desert. Factor in a sloped site, planning departments, neighbors, fire protection, potential seismic events, or customization- in other words the reality of most building projects- and so far the record doesn’t match the rhetoric. The benefits of prefab remain, compellingly, more poetic than practical.
When we have massive factories turning out houses as if they were planes, cars, or iPods- thousands at a time-they will undoubtedly be cheaper and faster than traditional site-built structures. Until then, prefab experiments are artisan craftsmanship, not assembly line products. And herein lies their charm.
The appeal of the recent round of prefab experiments (each generation of architects seems destined to pick up the challenge) has nothing to do with their efficiency as a building delivery method but rather in how they spark our poetic imagination. Perhaps it is their toy-like quality (they are like a child’s building blocks). Perhaps it is the fascination of the miniature (many are quite small). Perhaps it is just their stylistic flair (there is a surprisingly consistent formal language in these projects, not entirely explainable by fabrication processes). Perhaps it is something more fundamental: their completeness when they arrive on site makes them imaginable as luxury goods, not the product of a messy and dirty construction process.
For now, the systems that can make real claims for efficiency are the ones that deal with components of buildings. The 4×8 sheet of plywood, an inarguably efficient building component, is prefab. And certainly pre-engineered steel buildings, although not pure prefab, are able to match many of the claims of the movement.
Which brings me to toilets. As any architect knows, the structure and shell make up only part of the cost and time of a building project. The stuff generally hidden from view is the real challenge: plumbing, electrical , lighting, heating, and, increasingly, data and telecom. These are the expensive, time-consuming guts of most projects.
With this in mind, we proposed a prefab restroom for the graduate studios at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. It is an entirely factory-built restroom. Plumbing fixtures, lighting, finishes , even toilet paper were pre-installed in a shipping container shell at the factory. The completed product was put on a truck, driven to the site, craned into place, and plugged in to power, water, gas, and drain connections. It truly was faster and cheaper than building on site. But, in the end, that was not the real appeal of the exercise. Instead, it was the idea of the crane lifting the completed building block onto the site that became the story embedded in the building. It is the joy of the child’s toy.
LivingHomes RK1, by Ray Kappe, photo by LivingHomes/C.J. Berg.Remarks at the Hammer
Ray Kappe is the founder of SCI-Arc, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, which he directed until 1987. At the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, he recently discussed his long exploration of prefabrication, leading to the LivingHome, a modular, steel-framed, prefabricated house recognized as the first LEED Platinum home in the U.S.
I started back in the early ’50s. I wasn’t a Case Study architect, but the work we were doing was Case Study-like, and my first work was mostly post and beam houses. The thing I liked about post and beam houses was that they had the potential to be precut and predrilled, prefabricated in a sense but built on the site, and they could have infill panels. So the houses looked not so different from the Case Studies, but they were wood houses and detailed in wood rather than steel.
For developers, though, I was doing conventional construction in condominiums. It was about ten years into my career. I’d completed about fifty houses and quite a few apartments and other commercial and industrial work, but I felt that I didn’t want to build them that way if I could help it. I would rather try to develop a modular system that could be built either on site or off site-made out of mechanical cores and laminated beams spanning between them, then bedroom and living room units could be slipped in. I was supposed to build [one], but the condominium market fell out at that moment. Banks weren’t loaning any more, and so that project didn’t go ahead. Later, when I had a chance to do student housing at Sonoma State, I tried to do it again, but again the developer didn’t go ahead. So, through the years, I kept trying to use this system. I tried to do it with custom houses; my own house has that same idea.
And then I did a hybrid system, in which there was a combination of post and beam and core units, and in this case they were all precut and predrilled, brought to the site and erected in one day, very similar to the way you do a steel erection. My goal was to try to use the crane, try to speed up the building process, try to have repetitive housing, because I was more interested in mass housing, as many architects were and are.
In 2004, I met Steve Glenn (CEO of LivingHomes), and he was interested in getting into the prefabrication business. He asked me if I was interested, and I said I sure was, I’ve been waiting my whole life to be able to do this.
Glidehouse, mkd, photo by John Swain.A Virtual Symposium
Growing up in Iowa, Michelle Kaufmann has always had a deep understanding of the relationship between humankind and the environment. When she relocated to Northern California, she found a lack of affordable, sustainable, well-designed homes, which prompted the founding, in 2002, of Michelle Kaufmann Designs.
A co-innovator of Project FROG, Mark Miller, AlA, has worked with leading international corporations, financial institutions, non-profit organizations, and institutions of higher education in the United States, Asia, and Europe and has been a Keasbey Fellow and a Henry Luce Scholar.
Michelle and Mark responded independently to a set of questions submitted by the editor of arcCA. We juxtapose their responses here, which also gives us the chance to correct a misperception we have encountered on occasion: Kaufmann’s firm, Michelle Kaufmann Designs (mkd), is not affiliated with Miller’s professional services partnership with Steven A. Kelley, AlA, MKThink.
arcCA: How do you see current prefabrication in relation to the history of attempts at prefabrication for a consumer market?
Miller: The more exciting current efforts return to a successful tradition with roots as important as the 19th century Sears catalog and the building industry of the 1950s and ‘6os. Efficient use of materials and the need for affordable solutions are the common thread. What is unique about the current situation is the convergence of digital design technology, product culture, and efficiency issues within building design, specification and construction, which together provide opportunities for alternative solutions.
Kaufmann: Today’s communication technology is different; using email and shared servers, we can have fifty clients in fifty geographical areas and be able to develop and build their projects effectively, because we do not need to meet face to face all the time to make it happen. The other big difference is software technology that allows us to maximize efficiency with our drawings and production, to minimize time as well as significantly reduce material waste. And people are becoming more comfortable with the idea of good design and customization within mass production. Look at the iPhone. !t is mass-produced but customized to one’s personality and life.
Project FROG modular classroom, Jim Russell Racing School, New Learning and Technology Center, Sonoma, photo courtesy of MKThink.arcCA: Is prefabrication a fulfillment of the Modernist dream?
Miller: There is no question that you need to connect a future-forward designer with an equally prescient customer to explore fully the potential of prefabrication, and the core modernist principle of achieving more through less is essential to our efforts. Nostalgia and prefabrication do not make great bedfellows. I dread the day when the Post-Modernist goes prefab. Still, much of the potential of prefabrication lies in the convergence of good economic and good environmental principles. These goals, while related, may be tangential to the Modernist dream.
Kaufmann: For us, prefab is simply a means to an end. We didn’t set out to do prefab; we set out to make thoughtful, sustainable design accessible to more people, and, we hope soon, accessible to all. Modular technology is a way for us to maximize the predictability of time and cost and to prepackage green solutions.
arcCA: Did you look at historical precedents?
Miller: We respect the experiments and successes in historic prefabrication, but our roots are contemporary, relating to design, fabrication, and delivery clues available in today’s product design industry, where we see the most innovative and design-forward ideas.
Kaufmann: Charles and Ray Eames are some of my favorite designers of all time. They mixed play with genius, and the result was inspirational. I often wonder what they would be doing today if they were still alive. I think they would be doing this.
arcCA: What are the most significant external impediments to a wide acceptance of well designed, prefabricated buildings?
Miller: l am biased, but with the exception of very unique site conditions or extreme user needs the only remaining reason for site-built buildings may be the need for fulfillment of architects-as-artists. Otherwise, the advantages of substantially site-built projects may be limited. Prefabrication should be less expensive, faster to deploy, potentially of higher quality, and certainly more green. It can also reduce the cost, schedule, and quality risks that dominate the one-off, site-built process. With appropriate investment and a prescient approach, there are few design limitations in prefabrication.
Yet, human nature causes us to fear what is not familiar. If we want people to be open to the advantages of prefabrication—such as building more with less—we need to make the issues and opportunities familiar. To become popular, we need good PR. Also, prefab needs to work with industry and regulatory agencies to establish trust and standards; this means no short cuts in building code compliance.
Project FROG is the creation of and has been incubated substantially by, architects, which has been a hurdle with investors and the marketplace, as both have misconceptions of the value brought by an architect. The perceived ego of the architect has been a big obstacle. Provided architects are willing to work collaboratively with other thinkers and professionals, the viability of architects in this industry could increase.
Kaufmann: The only real constraint with modular is what can go down the road, and once you understand the rules of that, there aren’t many constraints. If we want a wider space than what will go down the road, we do multiple modules that are open to each other. If we want a taller space, we can do a roof module that sits on top of a lower module. We can do (and have done) curves, angles, and cantilevers. The possibilities are endless. It is like working with Legos.
arcCA: Can architect-designed prefabricated homes compete in the marketplace with manufactured and modular housing?
Miller: They MUST. Much of the architecture profession has surrendered its cultural value. Its focus has become self-referential, removed from the critical issues of society: affordability, sustainability, accessibility, and broad cultural dialogue—while the marketplace is marginalizing and commoditizing architects’ traditional technical and advisory services.
To be relevant in a digital and consumer-oriented world, architects need to engage their considerable skills in the key issues, industries, and economics of the future. There is more conversation about the design of the iPod or the Mini than there has been about 99.9% of architect-designed buildings completed in the same era.
Fortunately, architects can play a meaningful role in this field, provided they understand and will work within the parameters of manufacturing processes and economics. Quality and response to user needs matter to clients. Architects understand these issues and can inform successful modular solutions.
Kaufmann: We aren’t trying to compete with the typical prefabricated homes that are out there. We are trying to make good green design accessible. We are applying the attention and care that most architects give to site-built homes, but using automation and technology to make more homes designed by architects, rather than home designed by subdivision developers.
arcCA: Can prefabricated buildings fully respond to the cultural context? Or must we acquiesce to a limited set of ‘universal’ forms? What if I want Georgian?
Miller: Is the iPod responsive to the cultural context? Is Nike? For better or worse, products form today’s cultural context. A turn to product industry-informed buildings can respond better to cultural context than one-off custom solutions that take years to implement. The lengthy, defensive process of achieving the majority of site design/bid/build projects often bleeds out the cultural context that is crucial to informed and reflective architecture. There is a vast uniformity in today’s architect-designed buildings, a monologue we hope to liberate by making the conversation affordable. Going Georgian needn’t be an issue of prefab or custom design; it’s an issue of taste. Both approaches can give you an equally tacky solution.
Kaufmann: As people in the U.S. are seeing the benefits of prefabrication (which other countries have known for awhile), more and more people are working in this space, many different designers who work in many different formal languages. We design with warm, natural materials mixed with clean lines and healthy environments. We study the climate and design based on it, rather than designing based on what something looks like. So, if you want a Georgian prefab, I am sure there is someone out there who could do that with you. It just wouldn’t be us.
arcCA: Assuming that prefabrication is not perfected, where are opportunities for improvement?
Miller: When culture is perfected, then prefabrication can follow. Until then, perfection can be less the goal than providing viable, affordable alternatives that are unwaveringly green. Project FROG sees opportunity in the creation and integration of quality green products that can be a platform for customization by end users, architects, engineers, and contractors. Also, we need to educate this market in the advantages of pre-engineering and prefabrication-almost all clients and facilitators hear prefabrication and think trailer classrooms. This is a big opportunity, because that doesn’t have to be the case.
Kaufmann: There is always room for improvement. With volume and scaling, the costs will reduce. With every home we do (we have twenty-two completed now, but will have fifty completed by the end of the year), we learn and improve. It is one of the best things about manufacturing; it is one of the reasons we bought our own factory. We are no longer just thinking like architects, but also like manufacturers. It is a different mindset. That is the only way to pull this off: thinking with both hats on.
arcCA: Can you share an anecdote: that captures a characteristic moment of the process?
Miller: Project FROG has been blessed with supportive yet demanding clients for our two pilot projects. But, in both cases, they did not want us to use the term “modular,” “prefabricated,” or any other reference to an alternative approach, even though this was the key to our success with challenging budget and schedule constraints. They felt that, if word got out, their accomplishments would be tarnished. I guess that didn’t turn out to be the case, as we are discussing four more campuses with one of these early clients.
Kaufmann: One of the first homes we did was for Sunset magazine. Everyone was excited for its arrival. There were so many of us from our office, Sunset, press, photographers, all waiting in anticipation. But the house got stuck in traffic. So, we all drove out to the freeway to get an early glimpse. Soon, we saw it corning down the road. There was clapping and screaming (OK, maybe that was me screaming). We followed the house, led by police escorts, through the town. We became a green prefab parade.
Boucher Grygier Container House, Richmond, CA, Leqer Wanaselja Architects, photo by Karl Wanaselja.Insulated Shipping Containers
Cate Leger is a principal of Leger Wanaselja Architecture, an award-winning, green architecture firm in Berkeley.
Reuse of shipping containers is a twist on the prefabrication theme. Prefabrication has much promise for resource efficiency and cost savings; adding used shipping containers to the mix takes it a step further. These vessels of commerce are piling up on our shores. While we can debate the merits of the consumer culture that got them here, there are hundreds of thousands in our major ports. They are incredibly strong, designed to be filled to the top and stacked six or eight high on a swaying ship. After many trips around the globe, they are no longer considered worth the return trip empty.
We recently completed a house made largely from three insulated shipping containers. The idea sprang from an ongoing interest in reuse of salvaged materials. We chose the insulated containers over plain corrugated steel containers for several reasons. They are pre-insulated to R-13 at the walls and R-19 at the ceiling and floor, with virtually no thermal bridging or air infiltration. The structure is in the floor and the two short ends, leaving the longs sides available for large openings. Finally, they are more difficult to recycle than the pure steel ones because of the various materials of which they are made.
We stacked two 40-foot containers on one side and cut and stacked another on the other side of a two-story atrium space with a stair and bridge connecting them. One challenge of working with containers is the narrowness—7′- 6″ clear on the inside. To counter it, we added bay windows in the upstairs bedrooms. In the living spaces downstairs, we designed large openings connecting the atrium to the spaces inside the containers. The result is a compact, 1,330 square foot , three-bedroom, two-bath house, with a lofty, open feeling.
The project teases at the potential of these building blocks: cheap, salvaged, abundant, incredibly well engineered both structurally and thermally. On the first one, however, the learning curve was high. For example, how does one run plumbing and electrical through the floors and ceilings of containers? And get the plumber on board with these ideas?
Containers offer other challenges. Many city lots won’t accommodate a container graciously, let alone two or three. Others won’t accommodate the crane needed to unload them. And then there is the question of curves. Containers, like much prefab, don’t lend themselves to curves.
Containers are not for every project: no material is universal. Each program, each site has its own particularities. Shipping containers do fit a niche that, given their potential, offers much room for exploration.
Two Modern Cabanas, photos by Bruce Damonte.“Cheap, Fast, or Good. Pick Two.”
Casper Mork-Ulnes is a founder and partner in the prefab building company Modern Cabana and the principal of MU/D, a multidisciplinary design firm, both in San Francisco.
Architects and clients have long considered this statement an intractable reality. Yet, the recent democratization of design by publications like Dwell has called this paradigm into question. This trend has fueled the resurgence of prefab, with the promise that good design can be available to the masses. The public expects prefab to be “Cheap, Fast, AND Good.” Meeting these three demands simultaneously is the greatest challenge facing this emerging industry and the key to a financially viable pre· fab business.
Too often, the cost of a prefab structure is on par with or exceeds that of site-built construction. Many consumers are unaware of external impediments-site work, permit fees, and delivery-that add costs to the advertised price per square foot. These costs compound the importance of coming out of the gate with a price point that the market can bear.
Price speaks to our clients and their wallets, and we consider ourselves fortunate to have installed nearly fifty Cabana units across the nation and the Caribbean. We attribute this success largely to striking the right price/design/well-built balance. My partner, a building contractor, has played a key role in the design process, because he is able to bridge design with constructability at a reasonable cost. Our design/build model also allows us to eliminate costs associated with middlemen. These are savings we pass on to clients.
There is, of course, room for improvement. CNC and other computer aided construction methods show promise of further reducing costs and spearheading more unconventional forms. Until these technologies become more developed and less expensive, and until more versatile building materials emerge, we are left with few tools to control costs other than traditional manufacturing methods. In the end, price is what will determine if prefab will survive this time around. Good design is the easy part.
Prefab is Refab
Mikesch Muecke is an associate professor of architecture at Iowa State University. Occasionally, he creates And/or radically transforms architectural vessels with his partner through the design-build firm misumiwaDesign.
Let’s assume for a moment that the re is another, historical “pre-” before this latest appearance of prefabrication on the architectural scene. One example, Fachwerk (half-timbered) construction can be traced back to the 12th century, when it replaced post-and-beam construction in the wood-rich northern-European countries. This mortise-and-tenon skeleton system for walls and roofs continues to be used, in modified, CNC-routed form, in contemporary construction systems by such companies as ElkFertighaus of Austria, one of the largest distributors of prefab housing units in Europe. And Americans are finally catching on that prefabrication has benefits. There is doubt, however.
My first memory of prefab architecture goes back to the late 1970s, when I visited a friend on the northern-German island of Föhr. His mother’s house was a two-story box made with pre-fab walls and floors , bolted together on-site. i was surprised how quiet the highly insulated interior was, compared with conventional houses I had lived in. Yet it felt strange to be comfortable in this house. I thought then, as I’m sure many potential prefab customers think today, that if something is prefabricated, it could not be of high quality. The opposite holds true, at least with respect to quality prefabrication.
And yet, I’m still surprised how pre-fab proponents talk about efficiency of production without considering the effect of construction quality on energy efficiency. Again, the Europeans have a leg up on us. At the beginning of November, I went to the 2nd Annual Passive House Conference in Urbana, Illinois (www.passivehouse.us). Most of the attendees were architects, engineers, and builders, who originally lived in Switzerland, Germany, or Austria but had migrated to North America, bringing their construction expertise with them. What they have built over the past five years will become a model for highly production- and energy-efficient prefabricated building, with super-insulated walls/roofs (built to Passive House standards), heat-recovery ventilators, and thermally broken windows, with superb living comfort to boot.
Which brings me to site: making parts or even the whole building transportable is perhaps as much a desire to live anywhere (especially in the U.S., with its history of mobility) as it is about energy and material efficiency. That is why prefabrication paradoxically requires a superb knowledge of site.
I could wax nostalgic about what is lost in prefabrication: the on-site transformation of raw materials into a cohesive whole. But those times are gone–at least in commercial Western building practice–because of too much waste and too difficult-to-maintain quality control on-site. There is no home to go home to. Prefabrication is the past, and the future. Prefab is refab.
Desert House, Marmol Radziner Prefab, photo by Benny Chan/Fotoworks.A Means to an End
Ron Radziner, FAIA, is Design Principal of Marmol Radziner and Associates in Los Angeles, as well as Marmol Radziner Furniture and Marmol Radziner Prefab.
Architect-designed prefabricated housing fills a niche, providing thoughtfully designed homes not offered by traditional manufactured and modular home companies. While many traditional companies have mastered quick fabrication, they have not concerned themselves with design quality.
Architect-driven prefab can focus on space, light, proportion, and interaction with nature: elements important for any good piece of architecture. For example, we use steel frames as the primary structure to allow the greatest design flexibility within and across modules-enabling open plans and floor-to-ceiling glass for natural light and air, while decks encourage indoor-outdoor living. Our homes use prefabrication as a means to the end.
Because the traditional prefab industry has not focused on quality design, the public’s perception is not always favorable. There is some stigma attached, harkening back to the traditional double-wide rather than the new crop of design-forward projects. Yet, we have seen an overwhelming response to the emergence of the modern prefab movement. Thousands of people have visited our prototype, national and international press covers the trends, and the enthusiasm of those contacting our office is remarkable.
We hope that, by continuing to create well-designed homes built with a high level of control, we can chip away at the negative perception. By removing the uncertainties of working on-site and moving production into the cover of our factory, we can control quality, timing, and waste. We no longer have rain delays or subcontractors who simply disappear. Our staff works in the factory day in and day out, constantly improving the quality and speed of execution. Particularly in modern design, which cannot hide poor craftsmanship or detailing behind crown molding, prefab demands careful quality control.
By centralizing production in one place, we also see environmental benefits. Residences consume one quarter of our nation’s energy, and the average site-built home produces 8,ooo pounds of waste, which ends up in a landfill. Since we produce our homes in one location, we can reuse and recycle excess material. Extra tiles, studs, and other materials reenter our inventory for use in the next house that comes down our line. Also, centralizing trades under one roof reduces vehicular emissions from travel to construction sites.
Marrying efficient construction and thoughtful design lies at the core of the modem prefab movement. We hope that as architect- designed prefabricated housing grows, more people will be able to live in high-quality, green spaces that enable a modem, indoor-outdoor lifestyle.
Pacific Palisades Prefab, photo courtesy of Office of Mobile Design.A Community of Thought
Jennifer Siegal is founder and principal of Los Angeles-based Office of Mobile Design (OMD) and the inaugural Julius Shulman Institute Fellow at Woodbury University. She was 1997 architect-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation, a 2003 Loeb Fellow at Harvard University, and a 2004 Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. She edited Mobile: the Art of Portable Architecture (2002), and was founder and series editor of Materials Monthly.
OMD was founded in 1998. In that year, I created our first modular classroom, Mobile Eco Lab, with my students at Woodbury University. Our first prefab house was designed in 2000.
I like the specificity of knowing what you can design with and the precision that prefab structures offer. Working with a modular or kit-of-parts system allows us to create precision- built homes in 2/3 of the time at 2/3 of the cost of a s tick-built home. Ultimately, I will be able to offer high-end, architecturally designed houses for half the cost and time. I see it as a revolutionary way to build.
With Swellhouse, I was interested in developing a two-story kit-of-parts, a building method that could be flexible, easily multiplied, and modified. The design’s panelized system does just that, using SIPS and structural steel frames. The materials include Polygal, with U-values comparable to insulating glass, resulting in fuel savings of up to 50%: Structural lnsulative Panel System (SIPS), a highly thermally efficient wall assembly, which uses 8o% less materials than conventional framing with no off-gassing; bamboo flooring, an extremely sustainable material; and, for interior siding, Homasote, made from postconsumer recycled paper and containing no asbestos or formaldehyde.
We have developed a working method that is easily described visually and intellectually to new clients. The building method has given them confidence in their decisions, and it helps them make choices more quickly, as the system and pre-selected finishes limit their options.
I see prefab building as a movement in time and the work at OMD as the next generation’s thinking, having learned from the mid-century modern masters. I enjoy being a part of a community of like-minded thinkers who are pushing the possibilities. I believe that in the next five years 1/3 of all new construction in the U.S. will be prefabricated systems. In the near future, we will be building with robotic technologies, so that our houses will be manufactured the way automobiles are built.
Eco Hut by Parco Homes.Prefab NOW?
Kate Simonen, RA, SE, is COO of Parco Homes and Associate Professor at California College of the Arts.
Prefabricated homes of the post-war era looked to translate the technologies developed during WWII in aerospace and shipbuilding but were unable to compete with the cost and flexibility of conventional wood frame/stick built construction. The same issues are relevant today. In order to supplant the dominant production methods, a new technology must provide significant advantages in cost, performance, and design.
The existing prefabricated housing industry can be divided into three segments: components, low cost modular, and high design prefab. The component industry (most successfully metal plated wood trusses) has identified core elements of residential construction for which factory production provides a clear advantage-in time, cost and material efficiencies- over site-built work. Production modular homes have targeted the low end of the market, offering simple homes with compromises made to design and quality that are too great to make these products appropriate for developers or many homebuilders. High design prefab homes provide design improvements to the production models but generally do not provide either cost or performance advantages at a level competitive with conventional construction. Of these three segments, only the prefabricated component industry has been able to provide the disruptive technology necessary to transform the industry.
So is the current focus on prefab all hype? We believe not. In order to create improved and commercially viable modes of housing construction, critical evaluation and creative re-imagination of the materials, methods, and systems of housing design and construction must be employed. The conditions of culture, technology, and the environment make now the right time to launch a revolution in home building.
Current optimism towards technological solutions and customization makes the idea of prefabrication attractive to consumers. Mass customization has demonstrated the value of custom solutions created from a limited palette of options. At the same time, the escalation of property values and construction costs has limited the ability for most in the middle class to build their own homes. The ideal of prefabrication—lower cost, higher quality—becomes attractive.
Yet the technological advances transforming the building industry have yet to make a significant impact on residential construction. The growing capabilities of digital linkage among design, analysis, fabrication, and construction enable a more integrated practice, more sophisticated performance modeling, and the opportunity for site and project customization, while maintaining the efficiencies of factory production. Integrating sophisticated electrical and mechanical systems can result in ‘smart’ homes that respond to use and climate. The environmental impact of both construction and use of buildings is substantial. Maintaining the status quo in terms of production methods and building performance is no longer acceptable. As part of a team developing a customizable, prefabricated home system, we have been focusing on how to leverage current enthusiasm for the concept towards a true transformation of housing production and performance. Creating a technically sophisticated system with the ability to assess the full spectrum of performance (design, energy, cost, method, time, durability, etc.) through a digitally integrated production process will enable us to create cost competitive, site/client specific, high quality homes. We are pleased to be part of the community working to improve the way we build and live and are optimistic that with collective persistence we can make a significant impact on the environment. The time for that change is now.
Rehabilitated Cheap Chic double-wide, St. Helena, CA, photo by Carol Troy.A $40,000 Price Tag for an 800 Square Foot Backyard House?
Carol Troy lives in Orinda and St. Helena. She is an author (Cheap Chic, Cheap Chic Update, and Online Trading) and photojournalist whose work has appeared in Conde-Nast Traveler, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair.
I’m a troublemaker by lineage; my uncle Hugh Troy, so the story goes, was kicked out of Cornell Architecture in the 1920s, during the time of Nat Owings. So I am convinced an 800 square foot Cheap Chic Backyard House can be sold for $40,000 or $50,000, give or take. My plan relies on using the vast factories that churn out manufactured housing. In my corner, I quote novelist Tom Wolfe: “Trailers are the only successful form of prefabricated housing ever devised.”
Architect-designed prefab housing is nice, indeed. But sturdy, off-the-rack trailer modules are even nicer, in my book, for 25% the price. I’d design them to be clean, simple, cheap, and elegant. With California’s new law, we could plant one on every spacious and willing lot in the state that needed space for the in-laws, boomerang kids, or rental income; promoting suburban infill, saving resources like crazy, cutting back on commutes and getting a leg-up on the affordable housing dilemma without forcing communities to erect huge developments to meet their centrally imposed quotas.
When I wrote the Cheap Chic books with Caterine Milinaire, the theory was that one could weave a certain magic around strong, inexpensive basics. The little black dress, for instance. You can dress it up, dress it down. With the Cheap Chic Backyard House, I would work with the manufactured housing industry—ideally, Clayton, whose founder is wildly creative—and design the ultimate Corbusier box. The client gets the floor plan, designs the kitchen and bath unit from a national manufacturer on-line. Off to the factory go the plans. 800 square feet. Boom. It arrives at your driveway. The Cheap Chic team installs it, no local permits or inspections required, since it’s built to HUD-code. (The foundation, however, will bear local inspection.)
This is California. A state exploding with documented and undocumented immigrants. Exploding, here in the Napa Valley, with nurses, schoolteachers, and newspaper editors who can’t afford a place to stay. Desperate to encourage new affordable housing, the state passed California Government Code 65852.2 to allow second-units in single and multi-family zones as of right. But it’s going slowly, even in enthusiastic Santa Cruz, perhaps because of the difficult building process. (The only place near me that’s crawling with chic factory-made backyard houses is Calistoga Ranch, an Auberge property, but that’s another story.)
The Cheap Chic Backyard House short-circuits the building process and goes straight to the plug-and-play market. But the product still doesn’t exist. Why? California encourages it. But other states, loathe to allow “trailer trash” in their pristine suburbs, aren’t on the bandwagon. Economies of scale require a national market.
We can pay four times what we’d pay with a national manufacturer when we choose a beautifully made architect’s prefab. Or we can rehab: I’m living in a gutted and redesigned manufactured home, continuing my experiment in the Napa Valley, where most cool backyard houses are designed by architects such as St. Helena’s Howard Backen. While wildly chic, these backyard houses are not meant to be cheap. And until we can get cheap in this state, we can’t get affordable.
Taking Something Off It
Andrew Wagner became editor-in-chief of American Craft magazine in late 2006. Prior to that, he was executive editor and founding managing editor of Dwell, which earned the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) General Excellence Award in 2005.
I’ve always thought of architecture as the last great American craft. After nearly seven years at Dwell magazine where we explored almost every feasible iteration of prefabricated architecture—from the Motohome to Frank Lloyd Wright’s ill-fated American System Built Homes to our own prefab built in North Carolina by Resolution: 4 Architecture—I was continually amazed at how stubborn the architectural process was; it just seemed innately to reject industrialization.
This, of course, was a source of great annoyance to us, particularly during the struggles to get the Dwell Home I built in Pittsboro, but, in retrospect, I now have to smile. As the world barrels forward at a remarkable pace, there is something reassuring about a discipline so integral to our society’s well being subtly telling us to slow down and smell the roses or, barring that, stop and enjoy the buildings surrounding us. It seems to be saying, “Hey, not everything has to move at break-neck speed and, in fact, the best things in life often don’t.”
Architecture has always played a critical role in grounding communities, and it’s nice to see that it still is.
Originally published 4th quarter 2007 in arcCA 07.4, “preFABiana.”
