Compact, Light-Filled Prefab

Karen Kiest’s plot of land on Marrowstone Island, Washington, came with a surfeit of scenery—it overlooks Puget Sound—but suffered from a dearth of buildable space. The lot is near a bluff and a stream and has a wetland on and adjacent to it. "The [house’s] footprint became critical," says Kiest, a landscape architect. She considered modular construction as a way to streamline the building and permitting process for her weekend retreat, and researched a slew of firms. The clincher was finding out that architect Chris Pardo was developing a line with Method Homes.