shipping & prefab houses

The Casita 850 modular model emphasizes indoor/outdoor living with a flexible two-bedroom and one-bath layout.

Completed in 2008, the rectilinear home features a roofline with a dramatic parabolic curve that creates two bulbous volumes inside the home, one of which houses a curved skylit shower.

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.

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

Located seven miles from Frank Lloyd Wright’s estate, Tim Wright and Karen Ellzey’s prefab home is meant to pay homage to the great American architect’s experiments with modular housing.

The weeHouse exteriors are clad in corrugated Cor-Ten, but with a custom pattern of folds to create an organic randomness. The foundations were designed with a shallow recess around the top to make the modules look like they’re hovering. After they bought the property in early 2014, the Siegels camped there for two summers while they saved up money and planned a permanent structure. In his research, BJ came across this design, a customizable prefab house by Alchemy Architects. "Of all the things that I found, I was drawn to that one because it was absolutely the simplest and cleanest," he says.

#Honomobo M.05

Plant Prefab was originally established in 2016 as an offshoot of LivingHomes, a design and development company that’s built dozens of award-winning prefabs—including actor Will Arnett's home.

In thinking about the worldwide lack of reliable water, sanitation, food, and electricity—and the fact that housing sector contributes more than a third of global greenhouse gas emissions—the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture and the New Haven, Connecticut–based architecture firm Gray Organschi Architecture designed and constructed a 230-square-foot home called the Ecological Living Module (ELM). The construction is a fully off-grid housing prototype that was designed to take advantage of sustainable materials, green technology, and simple construction methods. There's a a rainwater harvesting system, a solar system that provides 100 percent of the building’s energy needs, and a graywater system that irrigates food-producing plants that mark the building’s west facade.

Minarc’s Plus Hus is a tiny energy-efficient prefab marketed towards homeowners seeking to add an accessory dwelling unit to their property. The 320-square-foot structure is prefabricated in downtown Los Angeles, and it can be shipped flatpack to anywhere in the U.S. with prices starting at $37,000.

This stunning forest retreat in England uses prefabricated panels to minimize site impact, shorten construction time, and protect against weather.

EcoCraft Homes is a Pittsburgh area resource-efficient Smart Home builder of super energy-efficient homes. Founded in 2012, EcoCraft Homes is a family-owned organization with a unique building philosophy in the Pittsburgh area that emphasizes energy efficient homes that can be built in as little as 90 days. Their mission is to build smarter, greener homes that are 100% Energy Star-compliant, and their manufacturing process is so advanced that our homes can be built to achieve net zero energy consumption for all of their heating, cooling and electricity needs.

In 2016, a team with over 25 years' combined experience in real estate development created Atlanta–based Compass Green to develop and market innovative technologies that can significantly transform the way we live.

Go Home by Go Logic is a design/build firm that designs and constructs modular homes that stand out in the crowd: they're both modern and contemporary, but still harken back to the traditional architecture of farms and barns in New England.

At $167 per square foot, this high-design, low-cost barn in rural Wisconsin is an American idyll.

This two-bedroom, two-bathroom standard Hygge Supply model was built on a corner lot in Traverse City, Michigan.