Mapping Prefab
In just under ten years, dozens of prefab projects from all over the world have graced the pages of Dwell. We sifted through our archives to find some of our best-loved pieces, revisiting stories from Ethiopia and Japan’s Izu Peninsula to modular projects in our own backyards. We created a map that showcases the preeminent prefabs from our past, with links to the articles and slideshows of images. Reacquaint yourself with old favorites, or find houses you may have missed.
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Greener Pasture
Like a little chapel on the prairie, architect Jean-Baptiste Barache’s simply elegant retreat in the tiny Normandy town of Auvillier is a modern play on centuries-old forms and technology. -
EggO Centric
A69 Architects were called upon to match concrete with concrete for this family home in Prague. Helping block the gaze of the high-rises next door, the roof slab of the EggO House, like an… -
Sustainability in Stages
"Personally, I’d rather be living outside,” says architect David Hertz. As a young man surfing in Bali, he was impressed by tropical village compounds where indoors and out flow into each other… -
Boom Box
Londoner Dave Clayden has gradually adjusted to life in the subtropics, where, as he puts it, “toweling yourself down after a shower is enough to make you start sweating again.” He no longer mistakes… -
Pittsburgh Steeler
With a nod to the Burgh’s industrial heritage, and an eye toward the new, Jeff Walz replaced an aging farmhouse with a chic steel cube. -
Lucky's Break
With a very limited budget and no construction experience, Lucky and Kim Diaz overhauled a wreck of a house into a sweet, 1,100-square-foot Los Angeles home with just $55,000 and a whole lot of… -
Tightly Knit
Drawing on an inherited plot of land, his father’s steel company, and his brother-in-law’s architectural know-how, Motoshi Yatabe’s new house is all in the family. -
Outside In or Inside Out?
Among the kitschy, gnome-loving chalets of Holland's community gardens, Krill Architects created an anomalously spare and highly adaptable Garden House. -
Simply Sustainable
Located in a hidden valley on the picturesque Izu Peninsula, a few hours west of Tokyo, the Watanabe Residence, designed by architect Tadashi Murai, looks more like an imposing black box propped… -
Post Bale
Boulder, Colorado, straddles a dynamic geographical border where miles of Rocky Mountains descend into flat plains that stretch all the way to the Appalachians. With four picture-perfect seasons and… -
Made for the Shade
The rusted red corrugated-steel canopy that covers Jim Austin’s home at Rimrock Ranch is visually striking in its desert surroundings -
Formosa 1140: Density in LA
Although it's not a 'green' space specifically, the new Formosa 1140 building in West Hollywood, by Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects (LOHA), embraces community living and gives back some public green to… -
Mother's Nature
The Watershed is an off-the-grid writer’s retreat that architect Erin Moore designed for her mother, nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore. -
Barely There
If not for the dawn appearance of the bear, which came loping toward Maem Slater-Enns and her then six-month-old daughter as they sat contemplating the water, the Enns family might still be residing… -
LEEDing the Way
One day last April there was great excitement on Highland Avenue, a quiet, hilly street (on which this writer happens to live) of Craftsman bungalows and 1960s apartment buildings in the Ocean Park… -
iT House, Joshua Tree
The iT House brings together raw industrial aesthetics with the tactics of green design to forge a new home in the sunbaked wilds of California’s east. -
All Clad
For photographer Ed Reeve, building his own house had been a lifelong dream. When he met architect David Adjaye, and found the perfect plot of land in London’s De Beauvoir Town, Reeve knew his time… -
Building Blocks
On a double suburban lot in Tokyo, the Office of Ryue Nishizawa built a neighborhood-scaled, flexible-format minimalist steel prefab compound for Yasuo Moriyama—a very private individual with… -
Four Walls and a Screw-Top
What does a $9.99 bottle of screw-top wine have to do with a prefab house? Vetter Denk made the connections in an innovative getaway for an enterprising vintner. -
Desert Utopia
With this elegant steel prototype, Marmol Radziner and Associates launch a new prefab venture with the goal of bringing their modern design sensibilities to a broader market. -
All You Need Is LV
In the most unlikely of places—rural Missouri—Rocio Romero has designed and built a prefab empire. -
Outback Staked House
A few years ago, while working with the indigenous communities of remote Arnhem Land, in Australia’s Northern Territory, architect Sue Harper became passionate about prefab. -
Sum of Its Parts
Taking cues from traditional Swedish rooflines but rejecting the precedent of subpar prefab, Claesson Koivisto Rune bring light and style to their "site-generic" design. -
Swiss Mix
Built for a young family of Spartan-minded clients, architect Felix Oesch's spare, concrete prefab outside of Zurich is a marvel of clean living. -
Take Me Home
A “tree house” of clean lines, ample glass, and thoughtful ingenuity lets a Washington, DC–area family and a stream of weekend guests enjoy prefab living in an unlikely locale:… -
On a Rock in a Hard Place
In an unlikely mountaintop locale, Anderson Anderson Architecture crafted a home out of a complex composition of off-the-shelf components, paving new paths for the prefabricated construction… -
Massie Produced
Art object or machine for living in Architect William Massie’s personal prefab project takes the mass out of mass customization to create a one-of-a-kind wonder. -
Method Lab
Designer Jennifer Siegal’s own house is a modest 1920s Spanish bungalow on the leeward side of busy Lincoln Boulevard in Venice, California, that looks nothing like what she makes at her day job. A… -
Future Building
Resembling in form and function ancestors such as Jean Prouvé’s prefab Tropical House, Architect Fred Friedmeyer’s prefab structures harmonize, as much as possible, with…
Articles
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101 Prefab
Everything you wanted to know about prefab but were afraid to ask! We've tapped the brain behind popular web resource FabPreFab to explain the birds and bees of manufactured housing.
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Prefab Parlance
From Kynar and Galvalume to SIPs, the terminology associated with prefab construction can be daunting. We asked a handful of architects and designers to help us build a prefab glossary of the top…
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Prefab, Proven
In January 2003, we issued a challenge to 16 architects: Design a modern prefab home for $200,000. Here’s the story of the house that resulted from that challenge—and what we learned…
Products
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Recycled Road Map Corkboard
It's true, foldout road maps are on the way out. This holiday season, clean out your glove box and put those old maps to use. Recycled road map corkboards are a quick DIY gift idea for the beloved…
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Food Map Container
The Food Map Container may look like a bathtub but is the ideal planter. Its lightweight recycled-plastic basin features a contoured drainage system built into the bottom and it sits on a…
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UK Type Map
London gets the lion's-share font, but this screenprint representing burgs large and small across the UK will satisfy Anglophiles who adore old Blighty in all its glory, all the way from Helston to…
Tips
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Think Smaller. Think Efficient.
Don’t target a prefab project and forget to adapt your wish list to fit the capabilities of the task at hand. A prefabricated house or commercial project has certain limitations, one of which…
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Prefab is Not Necessarily Less Expensive
It certainly can be, but as with any project it depends on the architect, the fabricator, and how everything is organized in anticipation of installation at your site. Your architect needs to be…
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The More Complete, the More Prefab
There are quite a few companies out there that are marketing “prefab” but not all of them are designing and producing entirely finished products. Many projects we have seen appear to be…
Videos
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Design Leader: Michelle Kaufmann
As part of our Design Leaders video series, prefab specialist Michelle Kaufmann shares her philosophy on sustainable modular construction.
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Contained
In a quest to create some private space in a soaring loft, two San Franciscans turned to shipping containers as a design solution. View the final transformation, which includes a teak-and-copper…
Event
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Prefab Education Workshop
Join Ryan E. Smith, professor of architectural technology and author of Prefab Architecture, in the Prefab Education workshop on January 13th, 2012. Learn about the history of industrialized…
My favorite. It has all the modern touches as well as the livable space I could adore. The trick is to find a lot that will not intrude the look of the house. Mose neighborhoods can't hack a great design like this one.
How wonderful, I don't know which one I like the best. I only wish I had the money to build something like these!
The map location indicating "Moose Lake, WIsconsin (sic)" is placed not "50 miles west of Milwaukee" as the article suggests, but almost 200 miles west in the great state of Minnesota on the I35 corridor. WI does not equal MN, my good people.
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