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Instant Suburb of Prefabs Hits New York

Andrew Blum's article describes Cellophane House, a 5-storey prefab going up in Manhattan at the corner of 53rd and Sixth.

Tags: prefab, wired_magazine, andrew_blum, architecture, nyc on 2008-10-03 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (3) -About

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Cellophane House is five stories tall, with floor-to-ceiling windows, translucent polycarbonate steps embedded with LEDs, and exterior walls made of NextGen SmartWrap, an experimental plastic laminated with photovoltaic cells. Its aluminum frame was cut from off-the-shelf components in Europe, assembled in New Jersey, then snapped together in 16 days on a vacant lot next to the Museum of Modern Art — joining four other full-size houses onsite through October as part of the exhibit Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. It looks as if a suburban cul-de-sac took a wrong turn at the Holland Tunnel.
Prefab is "modernism's oldest dream," curator Barry Bergdoll says. Since the industrial revolution, architects have been in thrall of the idea that houses could be built in factories, like any kind of widget. But reality hasn't been extremely cooperative. Whether because of conservative public tastes, unachievable economies of scale, or designers' less-than-stellar business acumen, their utopian visions have mostly remained fantasies.
But the strange subdivision next door to the museum suggests that prefab's time has finally come. The difference now is bits, not bolts. "Digital fabrication has become one of the key flash points for architects thinking about the way things are made," Bergdoll says as we tour the houses. On an upper floor of Cellophane, two riggers saw a crossbeam amid a flurry of sparks. (It was fabricated too long.) Nearby, a team of MIT students hammer at a cottage made of computer-cut plywood with grooves and joints ready to be fit together like puzzle pieces.

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Prefab-ulous: New Development in England Goes Up Green — and Fast

Brief article by Andrew Blum about Oxley Woods, a development of "90 eco-friendly homes, with 55 more planned to fill its seven acres." The key aspect? They're all pre-fab, relatively cheap to build, can be built quickly, and have in-built green features.

If Canada had a federal housing plan/ strategy, this would be something the Feds (and the Province) could take a closer look at. It sounds like it could be a reasonable (if partial) solution to our affordable housing crisis.

Tags: andrew_blum, wired_magazine, prefab, green_buildings, green_technologies, oxley_woods, affordable_housing on 2008-05-26 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Flat-pack village ‘may be the solution to shortage of affordable housing’ - Times Online

- brief article on St. James's Village in Gateshead, UK, which is Britain's first "village of flat-packed homes" "assembled from kits made using the BoKlok concept" and Ikea.

Tags: affordable_housing, boklok, housing, ikea, prefab on 2008-02-01 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromproperty.timesonline.co.uk

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