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As Koto expands into the US market, they recently grew their US team by hiring Amy Sims, an architect specializing in prefabricated environments.

Architect Tom Kundig set the living/dining room in a pavilion that opens to the garden on three sides. “This house is in a highly developed neighborhood, yet when you walk in, you forget that,” he says. “Indoors and outdoors aren’t two separate things.”

Iceland prefab pioneers Tryggvi Thorsteinsson and Erla Dögg Ingjaldsdóttir of Minarc built this Culver City family home with mnmMOD – a customizable, locally manufactured building system of prefabricated panels the duo designed, which minimizes energy consumption and reduces a home’s carbon footprint. Made with a blend of 30 percent recycled steel and cradle-to-cradle certified extruded polystyrene, mnmMOD components can be assembled with just a screw gun.

The prefab design utilizes a pin foundation system that reduces the project’s carbon footprint by 77 percent, says Wittman.

Bertoia side chairs and an Aplomb pendant by Foscarini complete the dining area.

Seattle architecture firm Wittman Estes used its new modular prefab system to built a prototype on Whidbey Island in Washington for a family that loves the outdoors.

Inspired by Swiss Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, the Yudchitzes designed and crafted an exquisitely precise interior. As they report in this Dwell article, “It cost at least $100,000 to build because the materials were crafted to within .002 inches, so it’s expensive for what it is."

Their design took four months to construct. And much like their later project on the same property, the Nest, the EDGE cabin features a protective, movable screen: when not in use, these white oak panels slide inwards to sheild the cabin windows and doors.

When move-in day arrived, right in time for Thanksgiving in 2007, Bayley hired a crane to lift his furniture up to his new home. “The stuff started coming up, and right away half of it went back down,” he says. “You’d ruin this house if you had too much stuff.”

His Gaggenau oven and range, set into an oiled-steel counter, help heat things up in his kitchen.

Bayley’s ventless fireplace from Spark Modern Fires keeps the house toasty as he reads in his favorite red armchair, a vintage-store find, in his bedroom.

The apartment benefits from large windows, which combines with the light-toned oak and quartzite to create an apartment that glows.

The existing black granite kitchen countertops were initally kept, but floor damage from an upstairs apartment's water leak prompted the couple, while choosing new floors, to also add white quartzite countertops.

The existing cabinetry was given new white oak doors, while an additional arched shelving unit was added, as well as an extended end cupboard that extended the islaand.

Throughout the home, windows by Pella and sliding doors optimize passive cooling and solar gain. The cottage exterior is clad entirely in shakes of Alaskan yellow, a type of cedar with neutral hues; the surrounding fence is made from western red cedar.