Heating for the unit is provided by a Spartherm fireplace, with electric heating integrated into the magnesite floor. Walls are insulated with fire-tested wool felt under plywood panels.

Michael Benjamin Lerner of the band Telekinesis collaborated with local prefab builder NODE to build a 392-square-foot DADU in Lerner’s Seattle backyard. The builder took care of design, permitting, site prep, and the foundation and framing. Michael tackled the finish work.

The L-shaped secondary building perches over a craggy escarpment. It offers the best vantage point for taking in the moss-planted roof, forest, and ocean.

It takes three to five days to install a Vipp Shelter onsite.

NOEM, a Barcelona–based architecture firm, created a metal-clad house for a young client just outside Madrid. It’s raised 12 feet off the ground to offer better views of the landscape, lending it "the futuristic feeling that it just landed," says Pol Guiu, one of NOEM’s cofounders.

Mary and Kundan Bhullar built a shipshape country escape that sits lightly on the land in the Aravalli hills near Gurgaon, India.

The Minimod by MAPA of Montevideo, Uruguay, is a primitive refuge with a modern twist.

Photo by Patrick Barta

This dreamy, glass bedroom by the lake was created as an early prototype for the prefabricated greenhouse/she kits known as the Kekkilä Green Sheds.

Helsinki architect Ville Hara and designer Linda Bergroth collaborated on a prefab shed-meets-sleeping cabin, which can be assembled with little else than a screwdriver. Bergroth, inspired by nomadic yurt dwellers, wanted an indoor/outdoor experience for her property in Finland.

This 3,200-square-foot structure was assembled with a prefabricated foundation, concrete panel siding, and efficient built-ins, minimizing construction debris and toxins—such as concrete foundation tar—on the site.

Six-inch-square blue tiles cover the walls and floor of the girls’ upstairs bathroom. The towels and rug are also by H&M Home.

"How would a kid draw a house?" architect Per Franson asked himself when designing the Olivero-Reinius family home. The simple prefab structure’s unusual color comes from a traditional source: falu rödfärg, the historic mineral paint that gives the region’s famous barns their red color.

The inspiration for this prefabricated, modular family home on Fishers Island, New York, were the views that Tanney and Luntz saw from a 12-foot stepladder, which was balancing on the bed of a pickup truck when they first visited the site.

According to Remijnse, since the only direction they could build on the small site was up, they decided to add height with a gabled roof.

Red ALPOLIC aluminum composite panels have been used for the exterior cladding.

The only grouping of Frank Lloyd Wright's early American System-Built Homes—built by Arthur Richards and designed with standardized components for mass appeal to moderate-income families—is situated in the Burnham Park neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The four model 7A duplexes, one model B1 bungalow (shown here), and model C3 bungalow were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

The collaborative team of Studio Bark and Lowe Guardians describe the SHED concept as

Many elements of the home can be controlled remotely from the residents’ smart phones, including internal temperatures. The GPS on their phones will activate heating systems 20 minutes in advance of their arrival to optimize energy consumption. A similar system is employed for the showers; a water recirculation pump fills the pipes with hot water five minutes before a scheduled shower time.

The firm also designed a slatted screen next to the staircase.

Davor (with his wife, Abbe, and son, August) designed the main living and dining pavilion as a double-height space to increase its perceived volume, and added high cubbies for extra storage.

A Simple Plan A Marmol Radziner–designed prefab house, trucked onto a remote Northern California site, takes the pain out of the construction process.

An attentive sensitivity to site played into nearly every aspect of both the exterior andinterior spaces of the home. Architect Peter Rose collaborated with landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, who worked to craft and maintain the wild, organic feel of the environs. Will Parry, a local builder, custom-fabricated all of the sustainably harvested Spanish cedar-and-glass windows and skylights throughout. Here, a vertical-swinging window at the end of the entry hallway opens directly to a lush expanse of vegetation.

When Abbie and Bill Burton hired Marmol Radziner to design their prefab weekend home, their two requests were “simple-simple, replaceable materials,” says Abbie—such as concrete floors (poured offsite in Marmol Radziner's factory) and metal panel siding—and “the ability to be indoors or outdoors with ease.” Deep overhangs provide shade and protection from rain, so the Burtons can leave their doors open year-round and hang out on their 70-foot-long deck even in inclement weather. They visit the house once a month, usually for a week at a time, with Vinnie and Stella, their rescue Bernese Mountain dogs. Their two adult children occasionally join them. The couple hopes to one day retire here.

This one-bedroom, 463-square-foot model is available at a starting price of $49,081.

The units don't even require foundations—simple ground screws from Krinner are enough to support them.

Architect Oliver Lang and his partner, Cindy Wilson, created Monad, a multiunit prefab prototype in Vancouver.

Landscape architects Reed Hilderbrand helped fill out the completed prefab by planting sedge grass on one of the house’s two green roofs to reflect the texture of the surrounding meadow.

Lushna's dwellings are available in Europe and the U.S., though for customers in the latter, prices can vary based on shipping costs and taxes. The baseline price of Villa Massive, seen here, is approximately $9,375. The canvas-lined Villa Air's is $4,453. To see Lushna's full range of products, visit their website here!

New pine and spruce wood from the Pyrenees (both recyclable and PEFC certified) were selected for the façade of the 1,000-square-foot prefab. Smart blinds cover the windows, rigged to open and close depending on the weather forecast.

Tucked away on the edge of a small lake surrounded by mountains and topped off with a grass-covered roof, this hunting cabin designed by Snøhetta is made with locally sourced stones. The 376-square-foot prefab mountain hut sleeps up to 21 guests around a central fireplace.

The roofline of the Tind house prototype, designed by Claesson Koivisto Rune for prefab company Fiskarhedenvillan, has more conventional Swedish gables than the flat-roofed modernism of typical prefab units.

WAVE CANDLESTICK The Wave Candlestick combines traditional craft production with a contemporary design sensibility. Hand-turned by artisans in Jaipur, India and designed by Michael Dreeben for AKMD, the Wave Candlestick mimics the undulating curves of sine waves. Each candlestick is made from repurposed, sustainably—harvested Mango wood -a native tree to India— and is burned and oil finished.

€19,900 (approximately $23,500), with additional costs for some custom upgrades, taxes, and transportation.

The resident, a Tokyo transplant, commissioned architect Tadashi Murai to create a fully-equipped structure that comes with its own power, heating and cooling, water, and waste-disposal systems.