Modern prefab housing. - Page 2

Your ex-girlfriend searched the internets for an hour or two looking at all the various prefabricated homes for sale around the world, and then selected the ones that she found aesthetically pleasing or uniquely designed?

She sounds hot.

relatively modern considering the history of architecture, Rudolf Schindler's home built in 1928 was his model for low cost pre fab home construction. for the life of me, i can't find good pictures of two of my favorite features of the home, the outdoor fireplaces and the 2nd floor sleeping baskets which were basically bedrooms with a frame but no windows or walls covered with ivy and completely exposed to the elements.





original source for images:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3Den%26sa%3DN

-Jeff

Rudolph Schindler was one of the creative talents that fled the increasing lunacy of Germany in the era before Hitler ascended to power. Many of those talented people found a home in Southern California; Schindler was one of them.

If I recall correctly, a dentist in the greater Los Angeles area commissioned Schindler to build a dozen summer or beach homes with Sleeping Baskets at Windan’sea Beach in La Jolla. Constructed in the 1920s, the homes are only a half-mile away from our primary residence. They are situated between Playa del Sur and Gravilla Streets west of La Jolla Boulevard. The project design is known as El Pueblo Ribera.

Over the years, fire, general neglect, and unsympathetic remodeling have taken a terrible toll on the original poured concrete designs. Each wall is poured in horizontal layers, one layer atop the other. Your can see the layer lines in the photos below. I have visited seven of the twelve cottages over the years between 1970 and 1981. I spent many a cold foggy night in one of the original and open-to-the-elements Sleeping Baskets as a guest of a family member of one home’s owners. We would clamber out of our sleeping bags in the pre-dawn light to be the very first surfers into the water on some of those mornings. The Sleeping Baskets of all the homes are enclosed today.

Two books featuring the Pueblo Ribera homes were published in the 1960s and 1970s. The best photos of the homes are in the archives of the La Jolla Historical Society. Eleven of the homes remain with a variety of existing modifications in place. A fire gutted the twelfth more than twenty years ago. It was not rebuilt.

Originally, the homes were intended only for seasonal use in the summer and early autumn when the daily temperatures make it pleasant. The three images in the triptych below don’t really represent the site-specific nature of the homes in proximity to the beach less than one hundred yards away. At the time they were built, they stood proud alongside a little gully away from other homes in the area. The left and center photos are from the time of construction while the image on the right was made only a few years ago. Today, the structures are nearly buried alongside other neighborhood structures on the two serpentine streets in the densely overbuilt beach area.

Schindler’s use of concrete was in stark contrast to the steel used by another famous contemporary, Richard Neutra. Many examples of designs by each architect remain in San Diego and other parts of southern California today. Here is a link with a little more information and its own list of links. http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildi...Ribera_Ct.html



__________________

There have been several 'prototype' prefab and/or modular efforts, especially in the modernist milieu from early 1900's on, but it hasn't been until recently that well-designed, prefab modular was made a reality. I think it has something to do with economies of scale being less of a factor to the bottom line (which is what made trailer homes so crappy, i think), as well as the recent viability of mass customization. The market is still in its infancy but is (we're hoping) set for pretty big expansion.

too too cool Full Canvas! i would love to have stayed a night in a Schindler original.

-Jeff

So we can count on a discount for forum members?

right...i don't even think I would get a discount.

You know I'm joking. Not like I posted my paypal account or anything....

Seriously though, I'm glad this thread was started. I'll be buying a place in a couple of years time and I hadn't even considered pre-fab. I always thought it was cheapo trailer park kinda stuff, but some of the designs I've seen are incredible. They're much better designed than the typical 3-4000 sq. ft houses you see going up in most places.

I'm curious, can you tell me how much more expensive it would be, on average, to have one of your 2500sq.ft houses designed & built from scratch by an architect? Is it 25% or 50% more for a similar design and quality of materials & construction?

It sortof depends on your site conditions, how close you are to the factory (site prep and shipping are expensive), and local construction costs. But generally, I think a designed-from-scratch house would be a little more expensive, although probably under 25%. Where you start to save money is in construction time. A good quality 'stick-built' house will take maybe a year or a year and a half, from groundbreaking to move-in, where a pre-fab will take maybe 6 months. That's 6 months to a year less of construction loan interest piling up, as well as the overlap with your existing home mortgage or rent payments. Costs for the factory-built portion of the house are very predictable, whereas custom homes tend to bust budget and/or schedule.

...not to mention you're talking about iteratively improved design for the pre-fab standard house, versus a lot more reinventing-the-wheel type inefficiency for the custom-from-scratch house. you can get more bang for your buck with pre-fab, in my opinion.

plus our houses (and some of the others) are very 'green' without sacrificing comfort.

/Andrew - has the bitter aftertaste of sales pitch in his mouth

Indeed. One could also mention the work of Jean Prouvé in the early 50s with his prefabricated metal houses (e.g. Tropical House project).

!luc

One of the strangest experiences that I have had regarding architecture and design was seeing Prouve tables at the Paris Furniture Biennale selling for 300k Euros. It is such the opposite theory that he worked by that I had to laugh at all of the people swooning over them and remarking how great they would look in "the house in Capri".

I'd buy one of those pre-fab houses to plop down in the jungles of India, next to some palace ruin, a BMW 507 running dust trails around the region.

I really like those designs. They were in Wired magazine about a year ago, no?