Fine Living: Prefab cabanas catch on as affordable extra room

Prefab Cabanas home picture

Nate Cohen wanted to add on a guest bedroom to his home in Larkspur; instead he added a guest house complete with a kitchenette and full bath in his front garden, and was ready to welcome out-of-town visitors in just a few months.

"Everybody who sees it, wants to come and stay in it," he says of his compact 12-by-25 prefabricated building with knotty cedar siding and a 50-year steel roof.

And why not? There's a shower/tub combo and a tile floor from Tile Stone in San Rafael in the bathroom; a cooktop, maple cabinetry and granite countertops in the kitchen; and floor-to-ceiling windows and engineered walnut flooring in the open living space.

His studio by Modern Cabana, the latest model to roll off the San Francisco company's assembly line, is highly customized, but all models are "green" with recycled denim insulation, dual-pane or low-E coating windows, no or low VOC finishes and FSC-certified wood down to the studs. Because it uses off-the-shelf materials, "we have just a tiny pile of waste - only 5 percent waste compared to usual 30 percent of a site-built project, owner and architect Casper Mork-Ulnes says.

Marmol Radziner Prefab To Install Green, Modern Luxury Home In Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles

Marmol Radziner Prefab (marmolradzinerprefab.com), the award winning architecture and construction firm that creates modular, prefabricated homes, has announced the upcoming installation of a sustainable, modern prefab home, the "Hollywood Hybrid", in the heart of Hollywood, Calif., on Tuesday, June 30, 2009, from 8am to 3pm. The installation event offers unique photo and video opportunities, and highlights the home's low carbon and ecological footprint. The Hollywood Hybrid represents Los Angeles' first prefab home located on the steep slopes of the Hollywood Hills, http://marmolradzinerprefab.com/custom_prefab_homes.php

LEED Platinum Prefab Home Now Available

Yet another large step in the quest to make green building efficient and more affordable: Green building leader Bensonwood Homes has constructed a prototype net zero-energy home that was recently awarded LEED Platinum status, the U.S. Green Building Council's highest rating for green building construction.

The Unity Home, currently occupied by the president of environmentally focused Unity College and his wife, uses widely available green building strategies including passive heating, tight thermal insulation and concrete slab foundation (which allows the home to stay warmer in winter and cooler in summer). These low-energy techniques work so well that even in the cold Maine winter, the homeowners rarely need to rely on the rooftop solar panels for energy to heat their home.

Green Design: SG Blocks Shipping Container Homes

Green Design Prefab Home Picture

SG Blocks Shipping Container Homes – Though ugly on the docks, shipping containers can be turned into something beautiful. The SG Blocks Harbinger Prefab is constructed of five containers. That means the steel frame can withstand hurricanes and earthquakes. Its also eco-friendly with FSC-certified woods, solar panels, rainwater recycling and a resource monitoring system from Agilewaves. Best of all, this funky home took under five hours to assemble after a month of fabrication, and it doesn’t look too much like the raw materials. To call one of these your home, it would take a day and a crane to install up to 12 containers, and the Lawrence Group, who designed the SG Blocks home, says it costs 15 percent less than a typical home constructed of wood. Time to get stacking.

Dwell retools on prefab with Marmol Radziner, Turkel Design

Turkel Design on Prefab

Put this one in the category of Interesting Timing. Just as other modern prefab companies are scaling back or calling it quits -- and as real-estate developers and architecture firms of all sizes continue to struggle -- Dwell magazine is launching a new iteration of its prefab construction arm.

At its Dwell on Design conference this weekend in Los Angeles, the company will unveil a new collaboration, under its Dwell Homes Collection label, with architecture firms Marmol Radziner and Turkel Design.

Turkel -- run by Joel Turkel, an architect and a veteran of Empyrean, the company that developed Dwell's prefab line before abruptly closing last year -- will design three prefab houses for Dwell Homes. L.A.'s Marmol Radziner, which recently shuttered its own prefab factory in Vernon, will offer six. The houses will be built by Lindal Cedar Homes, an established manufactured-home company based in Seattle.

My guess is this is more about the appearance of momentum for Dwell's prefab efforts than actual momentum.

Startup's prefab homes aim for zero energy bills

Startup's prefab homes aim for zero energy bills

Prefabricated housing seems an unlikely ally in the fight against climate change, but a new San Francisco company is setting out to construct factory-built homes that create as much energy as they use - reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with operating buildings.

Zeta Communities, which is headquartered in South of Market and owns a manufacturing plant in San Leandro, is close to completing its first "zero energy" townhome in Oakland and is working with a developer on a proposed 30-unit studio apartment building in Berkeley.

The firm plans to build segments of housing units indoors and ship them to development sites for assembly.

The End of the Road for Modern Prefab? This Just Might Be The Beginning!

The Glidehouse Is At The End Of The Road For Green Modern Prefab, my thoughts on the rise and, I thought, fall of the modern prefab movement. Joe Tanney is partner in Resolution: 4 architecture and architect of the original Dwell House and a master of modern prefab. As evidence, he sent pictures of a recent project, The Peconic Bay House, which he calls a "Power Plant" because it produces more energy than it consumes. Joe talks: "End of the road for green prefab? In fact, I think this just might be the beginning." He continues:

"This Prefab Power Plant operates $ 0.18 a day, because that's what it costs to be connected to the grid. In fact, several of our most recent projects are mini-power-plants. We are using co-generational systems of solar photovoltaic panels coupled with geo-thermal heat pumps (rather conventional technology these days) to generate more energy than are homes are designed to consume, and selling the unused energy back to the grid. RES4 PREFABS now produce more energy than they consume."

Joe then gave me his thoughts on the state of prefab: "It may be premature to call prefab dead when it has yet to really live. Or you might say we are still in the re-birthing phase ... maybe some have been still-born, yes. And maybe some will be resuscitated. Maybe not. Or maybe this is just part of the natural life cycle of prefab, which has always ebbed & flowed with varying degrees of success. Maybe this is prefab's winter season. Maybe some approaches are seasonal and some are evergreen. This pursuit of the "holy grail of modernism" is an ever evolving journey, a work-in-progress. History has clearly shown us that this is not a simple issue to be "solved" merely with branding or "productization." Maybe, it will take an evolution of one house at a time, instead of an immediate revolution, thus requiring a resolution ... "

Resolution 4 followed a different model than others, acting as full service architects and using prefabrication as just another tool. "As architects, we've been fortunate, so far, in that we have built RES4 PREFABS | THE MODERN MODULAR by RESOLUTION: 4 ARCHITECTURE from Maine to Hawaii, using modular, panelized, and hybrid delivery methods. We do not sell boxes; we are hired as architects and attempt to find the best bang for the buck by leveraging existing methods of prefabrication: working within the limits of the industry, always looking for fulfillment partners who are "best in class." In an effort not to fall prey to zombie prefab, we continue to refine and develop our system of design, the modern modular, with each home we complete."

"I just wanted to say, like Monty Python in the bring out your dead skit, we ain't dead yet..."