The Top 10 Prefab Homes of 2023
Prefab homes are starting to sizzle. If the umbrella term for a host of building styles was once shorthand for "cheap," the ideas we featured this year shrug off that perception by proving how well-designed residences can come as a kit of parts, an arrangement of modules, or a panelized system, and can be made of everything from CNC-milled engineered lumber to corrugated steel. Often, they are cheaper than stick-built homes, but not for a lack of quality—or personal touch. Here are the best prefabs of 2023.
The Tide Turns for a Trio of Prefab Pod Houses in the San Juan Islands
Having bought and restored several quirky properties in Washington over the years, including a five-story tree house and a 100-year-old barracks, architect Jason F. McLennan and his wife, artist Tracy McLennan, bought the camp-like retreat in 2020—even though it had no power or running water at the time and is on a secluded island with no ferry service.
Designed by a Boeing engineer named Hugh Pape in the late 1970s, the pods were prefabricated using aeronautical engineering techniques and airlifted by helicopter onto Pape’s property, where they were finished with modular panels and joined into a single retreat. "He built it like an aircraft," says Jason. "Nothing can rot. We haven’t repainted the exterior because I don’t know what kind of airplane paint he used—but it’s still going strong."
This Iwi prefab was designed by architects Juan Ruiz and Amelia Tapia for anyone looking to add a flexible space to their property. With a timber frame clad in cork and waterproof canvas stitched into wood ribbing, it expands like an accordion to a total of roughly 92 square feet. When compressed, it becomes a 26-square-foot roofed hutch.
The design, which Juan and Tapia are selling for $7,950, has plumbing and electricity that can be used off-grid. Its rear module has a bookshelf, sink, an area for a coffee machine, and also two tables and chairs that nest to collapse the structure or just save on room while it’s open. The default furnishings can be adjusted to include elements like a fold-out bed or couch, more counter space, or additional shelving.
According to the architects at iHouse Estudio, this prefab in Punto del Este, Uruguay, was designed based on "the client’s initiative to live immersed in the forest, always in direct contact with the surroundings. We based the approach on midcentury homes."
The blackened timber cladding helps the prefab to blend into the forest. The interior of the home was conceived as two blocks that house less flexible spaces like the bathroom, kitchen, and storage. This approach helped to avoid the use of interior walls, "freeing up the rest of the spaces to connect with the setting," explains iHouse. "The forest is framed at all times."
Dimensions X was founded in 2020 by entrepreneur Oscar Martin and architect Peter Stutchbury to answer one question: How can prefab housing be more site-responsive? Their answer is the modular cross-laminated timber OM-1, a roughly 600-square-foot cabin where everything from its dimensions to its envelope can be optimized and adjusted to better suit its environment, and its owner.
"Designed by Peter Stutchbury, one of Australia’s leading architects and champions for sustainability, OM-1 is possibly the most flexible prefabricated planet-friendly home ever to exist," Oscar told us. "Its materials are recyclable, and the cabin can be relocated at any time. It requires very little energy to run, which means operating costs are low. A recent analysis found it to be carbon negative."
Cabin ANNA began in 2016 as a way for Caspar Schols and his family to cope with a personal tragedy. At his mother’s request, he built a refuge on her rural forested property where the family "would feel connected and feel one," says Schols. "I started dreaming of how we could be surrounded by life instead of shielded from it." In ten months, the once physicist completed the Garden House: a prototype of what would, to his own surprise, turn into a much larger project oriented toward a deeper connection with the planet.
The mindfulness that the cabin champions isn’t only about sliding open the walls and immersing yourself in nature, but doing so by hand. "When you push the layers of ANNA by hand, the body prepares the mind to open up and connect to the natural environment," Schols explains. "It’s not just the physical boundaries that disappear, psychological boundaries simultaneously dissolve too. Your inner and outer world become one. You are fully immersed in the moment."
The sloping land on which architects Ignacio de la Vega and Pilar Cano-Lasso decided to build their home dictated a different kind of architecture than the one they initially envisioned: something small, site sensitive, and simple. These principles jived more with their core design ethos, anyway. The couple, founders of Madrid firm Delavegacanolasso, pride themselves on compact, modular homes that easily adapt to a site.
The construction used a system the firm developed for its modular prefab company, Tini, that allows for modular steel structures to be configured into a floor plan before being fixed with windows and clad with wood or other finish materials. The standalone office, where the couple now run their firm, is a single Tini unit. The main living home combines Tini units with a patio addition, also framed with steel.
"Sula is a prefabricated house that was molded and structured in Quito for two months and assembled on Santa Cruz Island, Galápagos," say the designers at Huaira. "It is composed of about 2,000 different custom-made wood, metal, aluminum, and glass pieces, which need over 17,000 screws and pins to put together the whole building. The assembly was carried out by four plant technicians and six employees, who traveled from the continent for multiple specialized activities for a total period of four weeks."
"This home was created for a family who have been residents of the islands for more than 40 years," the architects explain. "Elevating the building forms a cold air chamber under the structure that keeps the structure cool. The walls next to the roof generate a double space separated by the structural beams, thus forming another air chamber that ensures ventilation of the interior skin. Perforations in the floor and walls allow a cross supply of air."
Architects Gordon Stott and Jared Levy saw modular prefabrication as a chance to make high-quality residences more affordable—so long as the construction method was extremely efficient. In 2012, they launched Connect Homes with fifteen designs as part of its original Design Series. Since, Stott and Levy have made more affordable models as well as shelters and community buildings for unhoused people.
The steel-frame structure allows for floor-to-ceiling triple glazing along the perimeter of the units. Aside from this structure and the layout, everything from the finishes to the appliances are up for customization. Connect Homes also says it can work with clients on providing additions like a covered deck or a carport.
After more than 15 years spent in construction, high school friends Simon Fyall and Richard Egli started to imagine an architecture that blended in with the landscape of British Columbia better than industry-standard buildings. Soon after, the pair founded Blend Projects to build their vision: crisp gable homes strung together from eight-foot-long cedar-sided glulam sections.
For Blend Projects, tailoring a prefab to rural B.C. is about more than aesthetics. Apart from sourcing their structural and finishing materials from local suppliers, they aim to make all the materials and details as healthy as possible. "What really sets us apart is that we are all nature lovers and enthusiasts," the builder tells us. "That is infused into everything we do."
"Casa Acton questions the purpose of architecture and its relationship with the natural world," say the architects at Archier. "While the building is lightweight to ensure it can be easily moved, it does not feel insubstantial, due to sandstone flooring, painstakingly laid over many months, that provide a tactile surface underfoot, significant thermal mass, and a primal sense of permanence. Though the cabin is modest, it feels spacious thanks to a 24-foot-wide, floor-to-ceiling window. Strategically oriented due north, it visually extends the sense of space into a landscaped garden and the surrounding bushland."
The prefab home was crafted with structural insulated panels (SIPs). "SIPs are relatively new to Australia and provides a more straightforward and efficient alternative to traditional framing," notes the Archier team. "These panels not only offer a simpler construction method; they’re also thermally efficient and environmentally sustainable. Working with the standard dimensions of the panels and keeping the building footprint small proved cost-effective."
The Top 10 Prefab Homes of 2022
As the prefab industry thrives, designers continue to sculpt out niches in the still-burgeoning market and turn to prefabrication as resource for bespoke projects. From a bright CLT insertion into a brick-and-mortar London townhome or a glass-encased, one-room hideaway, let the latest in prefab expand your idea of what this technology holds in store.
Jens Risom’s Legacy Lives On at His Son’s Block Island Prefab
Following in the footsteps of his father Jens Rinsom, a celebrated furniture designer and pioneering prefab adapter, Tom Risom and his wife, Pamela Austen, built their own prefab home with an eye toward the future. "We took the plan that my father built and added 60 years of technology," says Tom.
Tom collaborated with Maine design firm Go Logic to create a 1,700-square-foot prefab built to Passive House standards. Even with its advantages—a high thermal performance, airtightness, and maximal solar heat gain, to name a few—the home features white cedar shingles and a shed roof that keeps with regional vernacular, and, like the A-frame, includes plenty of glass to capture the stunning views off the rugged coastline and Atlantic Ocean beyond.
In a bid to capture the attention of city dwellers looking for a quick country escape, Hurley House is installing a series of Scandi-inspired prefabs in the Hudson Valley meant to give guests the feel of a private retreat. The 400-square-foot units are framed with light-gauge steel, insulated with spray foam, clad in wood composite boards, and built on chassis with axles so they can be wheeled in and out of place.
Designed by Moliving, each standalone unit is like a hotel suite. At the front is a deck, where an entry leads past a bathroom, into a living area with clerestory windows, and then to a wood-paneled bedroom fronted by a window and doors that open onto a patio with a lakefront view. Sleek interior finishes, like a blend of tile in the bathroom, and wood cladding around the mini bar, give it a refined feel. Rounding out the accommodation is a hot tub positioned to the side.
London creative studio Unknown Works has bookended brick infill terrace house with two semi-detached additions to provide "space for a young family’s creative pursuits, ensuring the layout could be adapted for hosting parties and intimate family gatherings." Designed as a kit of prefabricated structural panels in spruce cross-laminated timber (CLT)—chosen as a flexible, cost-effective, sustainable material technology—the additions were assembled on-site in just four days.
"The CLT panels have been insulated, coated in textural render, and painted a bold banana yellow to form a stepped rear extension and cubic front porch," says Unknown Works. "The yellow additions are tempered by gently rounded edges to bring a softness to their overall form, and stainless steel rain chains—a traditional Japanese guttering option—negate any visual clutter caused by downpipes."
U.K. design firm Koto’s proof of concept for their new venture in architect-designed modular residences is in North Uist, an island in the remote Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The roughly 2,200-square-foot, four-bedroom home carries the company’s characteristic sculptural forms, jet-black yakisugi cladding, and Japandi aesthetic.
The roofs pitches align with the landscape’s different slopes, creating a sympathetic composition. The exterior is clad in burnt larch timber and features expansive glazing that embraces the views, timber floors, and natural stone details. Designed by Koto Living, a new branch of the firm, the interiors of the home reflect the studio's focus on natural materials and texture to create a connection between the house and its environment.
Designed by Manta North, this 516-square-foot guesthouse for visitors and family lies near the intersection of Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. The tiny home has a simple, archetypal silhouette with a rectangular form and a gable roof with hidden gutters that can either divert rainwater or collect it for filtering and reuse. The exterior is clad with cross-laminated timber, which the firm says offers a sustainable, durable, and precise alternative to concrete, metal, and gypsum.
Inside, the home features a fully equipped kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, a guest area, a smart lighting system, heated oak parquet flooring, and plenty of windows. "The internal organization is a play between activity areas at the center of the volume, and uninterrupted passage along the perimeter," Saliņš says. "The living area and the bedroom are placed at opposite ends of the module, while the bathroom and the kitchen are in the middle as functional separators."
In collaboration with San Antonio-based architecture studio Lake|Flato, HiFAB has created two models for prefab "Haciendas." Though they might look like regular homes—allowing them to integrate into existing neighborhoods—these homes can be constructed on site in seven days or less. The Studio is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom home that starts at $249,000, while The Standard is a larger three-bedroom, two-bathroom home that starts at $375,000.
Both models feature the same simple, clean design language with a vaulted ceiling in the main living and dining area that aims to make the relatively small footprint—The Studio is approximately 1250 square feet, and The Standard is approximately 1875 square feet—feel spacious. The modular components can be arranged to create three different layouts, and clients also have the opportunity to choose tiles, paint, and other finishes.
With sustainability top of mind, Dobrowolski and his team devised eESCAPE, a new line of all-electric tiny homes on wheels that can be powered with a standard wall socket, a solar setup, or an electric truck or car. The line’s three models include the eOne, the eVista, and the eVistaXL, which start at $43,600 and range in size from 200 to 350 square feet of living space.
The three home designs, created by Architect Kelly Davis with a Scandi-modern aesthetic, are insulated with Greenguard gold-certified recycled materials, capped with steel roofs, and clad with sustainably grown rough-sawn wood siding with a dark stain. Inside, floor-to-ceiling white birch makes for bright, warm, and textured interiors. "We wanted them to reflect natural beauty, and to capture a greater sense of space," says Dobrowolski.
Starting at $32,000, the roughly 100-square-foot, one-room escape by MuuwSpace is distinct in its hexagonal plan: a shape that the company's cofounder Tommy Truup says they borrowed from natural patterns. "Beehives and carbon structures in human cells are the same," he points out. "It makes it seem like a larger space—we wanted to avoid the feeling of being boxed in."
Three of the office’s six walls are floor-to-ceiling glass that deepen the user’s connection with the surrounds, whether that’s a remote piece of property or a backyard garden. "We use an insulated glazing from Saint-Gobain with metallic blue external reflection—it allows for privacy and has great solar control," says Truup. Customizable features include the interior finishes, heated vinyl flooring, dimmable ceiling lights, wall-integrated speakers, electrical sockets in the walls and the floor, and an air conditioning module.
To fill what they view as a gap in the tiny home marketplace, Howard and Kevern have just rolled out Vika Living's first product, the Vika One. The foldable prefab—vika is Swedish for fold—features a 144-square-foot open plan with a living area, a bed that converts into seating, and a table that collapses into the wall. The program is rounded out with a full kitchen and bathroom.
Aylott & Van Tromp has developed the highly customizable Nokken prefab cabin from the ground up to sell to hoteliers interested in bite-sized additions to their properties, or creating entire resorts anew. Anyone can purchase a single cabin, but Aylott & Van Tromp envisions clusters of them placed in remote settings to combine the experience of camping with the amenities found in a high-end hotel.
Wrapped in perforated metal and European larch stained a deep-brown color, the rectangular prefab includes an open kitchen and living space, a bedroom, a bathroom, and wall-height windows to take in a view.
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