Midwest Eco-Design - Your home for eco-friendly construction, remodeling & housing choices including prefrabricated homes, cabins and other sustainable material choices.

Project Frog

“It’s like a high-quality IKEA building in a kit, but it’s hurricane strength” says Ann Hand, CEO of Project Frog, a technology-meets-hgih-design startup. The firm creates low-energy prefab buildings that reduce both cost and waste while optimizing performance for the user inside. Hand – who spent 20 years at BP, most recently as SVP of global brand marketing and innovation – says that the VC-backed Frog approaches buildings as tech platforms: a structure composed of “smart” parts that can be optimized depending on size, use, and location. And because all the parts arrive flat-packed and ready for assembly, what once took two years to build can now go up in less than a month. Hand has helped expand the potential for “Frogs” from schools to partks to the health-care industry and retail structures. She is determined to revolutionize the entire $400 billion U.S.-commercial-building market. “I won’t rest,” she says, “until we shake up the industry and attach some guilt to wasteful construction.”

Article from Fast Company. Issue 156, June 2011. p.98
Image from “Project Frog” via Fast Company website.

4 Beautiful, modern prefabricated homes

1. pieceHomes eP:Studio (link)

pieceHomes are green, modern, modular homes designed by Davis Studio Architecture + Design. Taking advantage of the beauty of the surrounding environment is a hallmark of the designs by Davis Studio Architecture + Design, the husband and wife design team of architect Jonathan Davis and designer Mary Jo Davis. Bringing an appreciation of, and care for, the environment is a key goal of pieceHomes. Their combination live + work residence in the Venice area of Los Angeles was designed in part as a showcase of green technologies and materials and as the pieceHomes prototype, showing clients that green, modern, and affordable can go together.

2. Lindal Cedar Homes (link) – Featured Home: Colorado Retreat

Coming from local independent Lindal dealer Majestic Peaks Custom Homes in Colorado, this nicely-sized home is designed for one floor living. The great room opens to the kitchen and dining area with a 4 bay sunroom capturing light and views. The generous sized master suite is on the main floor, and two more bedrooms, and a full bath and garage are located in the daylight basement. Square foot on the main floor is 1,838, basement is 1,560, and the garage is 278, for a total living space of 3,398.

3. Method Homes (link):  Balance S-M-L series

Now available, the Balance S-M-L series, which consists of a choice of 3 simple structures designed to arrive 95% complete within 2-3 months of purchase. All three series of custom built prefab homes function as full time residencies, vacation homes & cabins, and even self contained prefab studios and in-law cottages.

Smart, efficient and well designed, the series of self-contained modular units highlights Balance’s experience in custom detailing and natural modern aesthetic at prices starting under $100,000.

4. Blu Homes (link) : Evolution series

Blu | Evolution homes are eco-friendly and designed for single-family primary residences, townhomes and development communities. The Evolution is the first Blu model to offer two-story living and features a beautiful roof deck, high ceilings, an open floor plan with a large kitchen, and abundant south-facing windows making it bright and spacious.

While a traditional home is built by workmen on a site, a prefabricated house is built in a factory. In other words, sections of a prefab home are built in large pieces in a factory, transported to the owner’s land and then simply assembled and placed onto a pre-existing foundation.

Modern prefab homes are also popularly known as modular homes as you can put together any number of rooms to create the kind of home you wish.

Prefab homes are increasingly witnessing high demand due to a variety of reasons:

Speedy construction

The construction of a prefab home is much faster than a custom built home. Within two months of order time your home is ready.

Since each room is built in a factory, all you have to do is to place your order with the prefab house builders and your house is built, transported to your site and then put together. On the other hand a traditional home can take few months or even a year.

Life nowadays has become very fast and people are perennially short of time. Prefab modern homes are an ideal option as they are faster to build and hassle-free.

Better Insulation

The insulation of prefabricated walls is superior to traditional houses as they are built in a factory. Although site-built walls are thicker than prefab walls, they still tend to sag over a period of time.

Protection from Bugs

Since modules of prefab houses are built in the factory, they are better protected from bugs. In contrast, traditional homes take a lot of time to build so the timber and other parts are more exposed to damage.

Money Saver

Once your prefab home is built, you can save a lot of money on electricity due to superior insulation. Precious money is also saved on lumber. It generally reduces construction and design costs to a great extent as compared to a traditional home.

Design the Way You Like

With a prefabricated home you get the benefit of designing your own home according to your whims and fancy. You can choose the number of rooms you want, their size, designs, etc.

Environment- Friendly

Prefabricated homes are less damaging to the environment as they are made from recycled, renewable materials, use less energy and don’t pollute. As people are becoming more conscious about environment, the demand for eco-friendly green prefab homes is growing.

In fact, there are green home building websites now that offer aesthetically designed environment-friendly prefab houses, modern outdoor and indoor furniture, home accessories, etc.

Better Equipped to Handle Natural Disasters

Prefab homes are stronger than traditional homes. Particularly, for an area which has experienced hurricanes or tornadoes, a prefab is an ideal choice as they can withstand violent storms and other natural disasters better than traditional homes.

Lower prices, faster and easier to build, and a range of designs to choose from are the chief benefits of prefabricated homes. The popularity of prefabricated homes is thus sky rocketing.

Prefab homes today are built from such advanced technology that you can’t even tell the difference between a prefabricated house and a traditional house. People from all walks of life are now choosing prefabricated homes instead of traditional homes.

Architect Andres Duany, best known for work designing New Urbanist communities (walkable, small-scaled, mixed-use) has shifted gears a bit to create a light, expandable shelter known as the “core house” for Haiti’s homeless. The house, designed to stand up to earthquakes and hurricanes isn’t Duany’s first foray into disaster relief housing: several years ago he helped develop the prefabricated “Katrina Cottage” as an alternative to the widely criticized FEMA trailers.

Duany’s house for Haiti is small– 8′2″ x 8′2″ x 19′8″—but can sleep 8. Essential for cost-reduction and ease of distribution—can be packed flat in a package less than two feet thick. It’s designed for quick assembly from a strong, lightweight, and waterproof composite material Duany describes as miraculous. Can this work in Haiti? We hope so. At present, there are at least a million people without homes in the hurricane-battered country.

Rendering courtesy of Jetson Green

This post originally appeared on www.refresheverything.com, as part of GOOD’s collaboration with the Pepsi Refresh Project, a catalyst for world-changing ideas. Find out more about the Refresh campaign, or to submit your own idea today.