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With an off-the-grid house on a remote mountain, architect Smiljan Radić rebuilds the past.

#Honomobo M.05

It collects rainwater and has a potable water filtration system, and is built with completely non-toxic materials.

When artist Birgitta Burling and her husband Staffan decided to build a house on the idyllic Swedish island of Gotland, they set their ambitions high. "The brief was to make a house that can do several things…to create a house with very little boundaries and infinite possibilities," says French architecture and landscape firm Collectif Encore.

“Every part of the house can ‘do’ more than one thing,” explains the design studio. “The stairs are not just a staircase. They are a laundry room, a bathroom, a bookshelf and workplace.”

In the summer, the kitchen counter transforms into an indoor/outdoor kitchen island. The outdoor dining room is located between two whitebeam trees.

"Radical sustainability

This house has an exterior of black panels and clear-grain cedar tongue-and-groove siding, and a rooftop deck that lets its owners enjoy the outdoors.

Named after its rooftop photovoltaic panels, the Solar Studio is the first completed build in NODE’s customizable Trillium Series.

The 500-square-foot home is designed for empty backyards in Silicon Valley. Abodu imagines the units serving as rentals, or housing for recent graduates or aging loved ones.

Bay Area start-up Rent the Backyard is making new room in dense cities by collaborating with homeowners who've got a little extra acreage. The company will install a prefab studio apartment on unused land behind your home, handle all the permitting required to do so, find a worthy tenant to rent the unit, and pay you 50% of the profits for providing the space—all for zero up-front costs.

One end of the backyard home holds the bedroom with a wardrobe and an attached full bath.

Nearly 500 miles from the high-rise apartment that Ralph Weigand and Maurício Uhle share in São Paulo sits a modest, prefabricated cabin, nestled deep in one of southern Brazil’s verdant forests.

Builders, developers, designers, and architects have developed a range of homes that are composed of prefabricated, modular, or kit-of-parts pieces that can allow for lower costs, faster and easier on-site construction, and even higher quality spaces. Here, we delve into the differences—and similarities—among these manufactured residences.