PreFab

For his holiday home outside São Paulo, Rodrigo Ohtake wanted to balance quality against affordability. He opted for prefab construction without the prefab look. “The challenge was to design a house that didn’t look like a prefabricated modular house, without deviating from the original modular concept,” he explains.

A view of the sauna building before the patio and seating were constructed on the other side. The log cabins were constructed by a specialist company, and another builder helped with the interior walls. Jussi-Pekka and his father did all the other building and landscaping work, apart from the electrical and plumbing—often working 12-hour days.

Completed in 2018 on a 2.6-acre site in the San Juan Islands, the two-bedroom modular home was installed in a day.

The pilot home on Whidbey Island demonstrates the system’s potential: a 600-square-foot interior paired with nearly equal covered outdoor space, set lightly on a pin foundation that protects tree roots and cuts carbon by 77 percent. "Puzzle Prefab can be modified according to each site,

Candour is a prefab building system and a tool to customize building components within that system—including walls, floors, facades, and roofs—with a proprietary CAD plug-in. Users of the software can draft a design, determine if it’s feasible, and price it all in one day. Designs are built at Candour’s manufacturing facility in Sunshine, Melbourne.

“The name 'Unfinished House' refers to an aesthetic attitude…. Self-finishing materials were selected to reduce resources and reveal the building’s construction. Tile and plywood are the only added ‘finishes’; They cover areas with wiring and plumbing,” the architects tell us. “The building is an all-timber structure with cellulose and wood fiber board insulation. Many of the materials were locally-produced including the wood framing, plywood, corrugated metal, and wood cladding.”

The fir flooring is by Dinesen. “Having worked with Will so much, I know he responds to a very calm and cool palette of beiges and grays,” says Reddy.

Frontal facade - Street view

As Nicolás Tovo and Teresa Sarmiento of La Base embraced modular design as part of their architectural practice, they noticed that prospective clients were wary of prefabricated construction. So the duo teamed up with Place, an Argentine prefab builder, to make a proof of concept just outside the Patagonian resort town of Bariloche.

An oversized window to the outdoors was a priority for the co-founders, who want their clients to feel connected to nature.