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

Prefab home gets ground-up restoration

Modular housing may seem like a new trend, but a 1950s house under renovation shows just how long L.A. has dreamed of its potential.

Renovation of a 1950s manufactured house sounds like code for a tear-down. But Ben Thorne and Eliza Howard think differently, perhaps because their home is Los Angeles' best-known example of the modernist prefab houses by the General Panel Corp. If that moniker doesn't ring a bell, then the name of one of its architects might: Walter Gropius, founder of the legendary German design school, the Bauhaus.