Not Just Fab, Pre-Fab
I'm increasingly interested in pre-fab housing. Some of it's pretty ugly, but there are cooler and cooler models out there; many or most of them eco-friendly -- like the house built out of demolished Massachusetts freeways, in this article by Robert Campbell in The Boston Globe:
''The design began with the challenge of the materials," says (architect John) Hong. ''The materials tell you what to do." It was almost as if he was told to assemble a house out of a pile of pre-cut pieces he had no part in selecting.The materials were free. Pedini (the homeowner) paid only to ship them. Pedini is an engineer who specializes in highways and tunnels. He supervised much of the building of the new Artery tunnels. He was able to act as his own general contractor on the house, bringing in help and heavy equipment as needed. As a result, he says, the final cost was a modest $150 per square foot.
The house was framed up -- steel frame and concrete floors -- in four net days, Pedini says with obvious pride. ''I cut and drilled the steel with two ironworkers."
It's a house built of huge chunks of steel that function as beams and columns, with large expanses of glass. The floors are concrete stained dark gray. The exterior walls are finished in cedar or zinc siding. In one place, a big X of crossed steel cables is used for wind bracing.
You'd think such a house might feel like a garage. It's sober, certainly. But the high spaces are exhilarating, they are filled with daylight, and they offer views everywhere of the wooded site. Some of the details are satisfyingly dramatic. The fireplace in the great room, for example, which is made of basaltic stone in a color called Inca Gray, is spanned by a monster steel beam. No one, you feel, will successfully invade this house.
For more prefab houses, check out Inhabitat, which has a whole section on them...which is where I spent much of my Sunday night!
Prefab housing is like what John Huston said about politicians, ugly buildings and whores -- it gets respectable with age. While a great deal of it is crap, and not much better, quality-wise, than a trailer, we tend to forget the wonderful Sears prefabs from the early 20th century, which now look like the charming cottages they were intended to be.
A former colleague of mine in Indiana lives in a Lustron house, which was made of enameled steel, like a refrigerator. It snapped together like a child's toy (some owners have disassembled them and moved them to new lots), and was metal inside and out. She hangs her pictures with magnets, and twice a year, she and her husband go over the place with a special touch-up paint to fill in the nicks. It's tiny by today's standards, but cute and cozy and certainly unusual.
Nance at April 18, 2006 6:53 AM
A friend in my hometown lived in a Lustron. The teal was a little cheery, but it was indestructable too.
They just gave away a bunch in Quantico (bottom):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lustron
Anyway, eco-friendly, responsibly reuse of materials is what we see in bum squats by the river downtown, no? Even the Big Dig won't supply many units like the Pedini place. MOst people don't have Hongs to cleverly compose with available scrap.
Crid at April 18, 2006 12:11 PM
That wasn't meant to be so Negative Nelly. But these guys (designer & builder/owner) were both expert guys who had special re$ources as well as first pick of 'shoddy' materials. We were going to admire ANYTHING they built.
Crid at April 18, 2006 1:15 PM
"MOst people don't have Hongs to cleverly compose "with available scrap.""
Most people don't want to live in cold concrete ultra-modern spaces though either.
Thanks for the link, Amy. I have wanted to get some land and build myself a summer cabin made from shipping containers ever since I visited Lake Almanor. They have these ity-bity hunting cabins up there that look as though they could be knocked up cheap. (That describes some chicks I've known too)
I'm a labor leader, so I should probably hate pre-fab housing. Yet I'm really into the idea of a permanent RV without the grandma chic decor that comes standard. The town that I work for, Truckee Ca, just approved their first ever subdivision comprised entriely of pre-fab units. We have an affordable/workforce housing mandadate stipulating that any project built needs to provide housing affordable to a certain percentage of the employees the project will generate. Well, one large developer of industrial space got the idea to get a variance and build himself a whole subdivision of affordable, pre-fab housing. The planning commission loved it. I love the fact that people making my wages will be living in pre-fabs 200 feet from million dollar mansions.
On the other hand, if you make money in this town, you either drive nails or sell real estate. Literally there is no other econonomy. So I'm not sure if we are helping the workforce by providing them houses, or hurting them by taking them by moving the hammers up to Boise.
I'll see if I can find the developers cost per square foot for the pre-fab subdivision and compare it to our regional median.
-steve
GISSTUD at April 18, 2006 4:57 PM
Great point. I made a similar one, just after last year's Hurricane season.
Modern Mobile Refuge…
From first hand experience in the design profession, I can tell you that the quality of prefabricated home design has improved tremendously over that of on-site development. A premium home design can be conceived, produced and packaged for delivery more efficiently than a construction crew can build one (of their 3 schemes) on site from scratch. And because of the stigma of prefab housing, that industry must deliver quality, variety and beauty in addition to economy in order to be competitive. And if anyone has seen the garbage that is being assembled in any subdivision around the nation today, you'll know that the traditional housing industry offers nothing like that.
I can tell you, that many architects are very interested and very concerned about it, as the Dwell article linked in my post suggests.
Mr.Atos at April 19, 2006 9:37 AM
Great point. I made a similar one, just after last year's Hurricane season.
Modern Mobile Refuge…
From first hand experience in the design profession, I can tell you that the quality of prefabricated home design has improved tremendously over that of on-site development. A premium home design can be conceived, produced and packaged for delivery more efficiently than a construction crew can build one (of their 3 schemes) on site from scratch. And because of the stigma of prefab housing, that industry must deliver quality, variety and beauty in addition to economy in order to be competitive. And if anyone has seen the garbage that is being assembled in any subdivision around the nation today, you'll know that the traditional housing industry offers nothing like that.
I can tell you, that many architects are very interested and very concerned about it, as the Dwell article linked in my post suggests.
Mr.Atos at April 19, 2006 9:39 AM
Great point. I made a similar one, just after last year's Hurricane season.
Modern Mobile Refuge…
From first hand experience in the design profession, I can tell you that the quality of prefabricated home design has improved tremendously over that of on-site development. A premium home design can be conceived, produced and packaged for delivery more efficiently than a construction crew can build one (of their 3 schemes) on site from scratch. And because of the stigma of prefab housing, that industry must deliver quality, variety and beauty in addition to economy in order to be competitive. And if anyone has seen the garbage that is being assembled in any subdivision around the nation today, you'll know that the traditional housing industry offers nothing like that.
I can tell you, that many architects are very interested and very concerned about it, as the Dwell article linked in my post suggests.
Mr.Atos at April 19, 2006 9:50 AM
I forgot to comment on katrina.
It is a well established fact that trailer parks attract tornados. Does it make sense to clean up the mess left by one natural disaster by installing targets for another type of natural disaster?
GISSTUD at April 19, 2006 12:55 PM
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