1. FLATPAK www.flatpakhouse.com
FlatPak is a pre-engineered modular home design system. Using concrete, glass, metal or wood modular “menu” components, the FlatPak system allows home builders to create a wide variety of custom layout designs and material configurations – a sort of “hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us…” approach. The Flatpak House was created by Charlie Lazor, a founding partner of Blue Dot furniture.
(*Oh for heaven’s sake if this isn’t the coolest prefab system I’ve ever seen. I really encourage you to look around the web site and see what you think. I WILL own one of these homes someday soon.*)
2. Enovo House (the Intelligent home) www.enovo.ca
From Canada, Enovo homes are ecological and evolutional through their architectural design, the building materials used as well as through the revolutionary home automation system managing their interior.
Enovo, the intelligent home, is without a doubt THE construction of the future available right now. A house that evolves, a house that understands, a house that lives and adapts; a house that suits everyone, all cultures, all horizons, all preferences and all aspirations.
3. Joshua Tree by Hangar Design www.hhd.it/j_t.html
This steel clad prefab is a compact two bedroom mountain refuge with a welcoming, and surprisingly roomy, wooden interior. While the exterior finishes might be a bit busy for some tastes, inside are clean, sparse, modern spaces with plenty of natural daylight.
4. ZeroHouse www.zerohouse.net
New York architect Scott Specht has the answer to all of our zero-energy prefab dreams with the new ZeroHouse. This completely self-sustaining prefabricated house generates its own power, collects its own water, processes its own waste and is 100% automatic. Versatile, durable and site-sensitive, ZeroHouse can be erected in almost any location in one day with steel frame components and a helical-anchor foundation system that requires no excavation.
5. iPadhttp://www.ipad.net.nz/
The iPAD is a true kitset bach designed to covers a range of options; it could be a one bedroom holiday home, secondary dwelling, granny flat, office, studio or resort unit to name but a few. It can be grouped as a series of pavilions to form larger accommodation if required. A single iPAD totals 50m sq with decks of 55m sq and will retail in New Zealand for $125,000.00*. Various external cladding and colour options are available to suit individual taste and context.
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3 responses so far ↓
1 Brandon // Aug 25, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Except for the Joshua house, which is in the middle of nature with no windows, the homes are spectacular. However, the reason modern prefab homes cannot sustain in the marketplace are the cost. The “ipad” is $125,000 for what? The consumer faces a dilemma of something aesthetically beautiful in the modern prefab with a low cost of $200,000 for some actual space. Or depending on what part of the country that you live in, $200,000 for a new brick or vinyl home. Therefore, if someone could make a modern home with 1,400 square feet for less than$150,000 they could capture the market.
2 woundedduck // Mar 6, 2009 at 12:42 am
Prefab is a utopian farce. They cost as much or more than traditional homes, and mostly feed the hipster/mid-century zombie need for a home that is different than their parents’. Glass walls and steel frames will never be cheap. You want cheap, you’re going to have to live in well-insulated boxes with a few skylights.
3 silly // May 30, 2009 at 12:07 pm
glass and steel will be the only options if traditional homebuilders continue to waste lumber during the construction process (have you SEEN those dumpsters filled with construction waste?). forests are disappearing. prefab homes are built in controlled environments, where weather doesn’t hurt buildings that are constructed during rainstorms, or ripped apart on windy days, etc.
Prefab homes also benefit from lower cost during construction because of a few reasons:
The building materials are carefully chosen and sourced for quality, durability, ease of transport, low weight, and PRICE DUE TO BULK PURCHASE.
Prefab is also cheaper. That means less money spent on the product, but also less time WORKING and COMMUTING to pay off that purchase. It gives people more SPACE in less square footage; more time is spent on the design of prefab homes because they are often limited by the size of a semi-truck’s bed; this time spent on the design (instead of just slapping together some rooms in a non-cohesive structure) builds a healthier relationship between the people inside the house and the environment.
I realize prefab isn’t for everyone. Check out BluHomes.com or Topsider.com for example. Prefab or Kit homes are really cool, serve many purposes, and like Jay Shaeffer of Tumbleweed Tiny House Co has said: how much space do you REALLY need to live?
My girlfriend and I are looking to build on a TINY ROCK upon which a conventional MASSIVE home is NOT possible to build. We need to lift a COMPLETED project onto the rock via crane, so PREFAB is the only way to go!
I invite you to be a little more open when it comes to dwelling design, and realize that there is no “one way” to live… every part of the world has different housing design; Morocco will have different houses than Siberia. Take the elements you like, adapt them to fit your environment, and if you can get the finished product shipped to you, you will have a house in less time than a traditional home!
prefab makes sense
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