It has been 20 years since Allison Arieff and Brian Burkhart published Prefab, the book that started the modern prefab house boom. As editor of Dwell Magazine, she directed the Dwell House competition, which was won by New York-based Resolution 4: Architecture (res4), which has been building the finest modern modular buildings ever since.
We haven’t shown much of their work in the past few years – this is the last one – because many of them are large second homes and readers are asking, “Why is this on Trihuger?” The usual answer is during construction. waste in the process, more precision and precision, and you won’t have a bunch of workers driving miles a day in big pickup trucks to get to your job site. This is a more environmentally friendly way of building.
When I was in the modular business in 2002, we never used the term “double-width”—that’s trailer park jargon. To this day, most modular builders try to hide the fact that they work out of the box. Looking at the houses of the companies that I have worked with, I would never have thought that they were modular, because they tried very hard to make them look like ordinary houses.
Solution 4: Architecture, on the other hand, is fun and proud of the box. This allows their structures to be built more efficiently and potentially more energy efficient as there is typically less jogging and pushing. They will happily call the Lido Beach House II a double-width four-box.
Lido Beach House is on Treehugger because it’s a great example of the benefits of modular design. The architects describe it: “This 2,625-square-foot prefab house sits on a flag lot around the corner from Lido Beach and serves as a summer home for the professor/writer and his family. The house tries to relate it to the surrounding dunes and the beach, but still relates to its convenient neighborhood.”
The four crates sit on a concrete-filled plinth that is raised one level, perhaps waiting to be flooded when the water level rises. You access what they call the “trash area” from an outside staircase that leads to a large flexible room while the two bedrooms can be closed off.
I’ve always liked upside down houses where the bedrooms look down and the living room looks up. If you are building in situ, this means that all the walls in your bedroom support the second floor and you can roof it over and have large open spaces with minimal structure.
Modular design has no structural advantages at all. Here they do it for the scenery. It is unusual to see him in a three-story building. It’s a big climb but well worth it when you get there.
When I was in this business, the simplest and most economical houses we sold were simple four-box designs where each box was about as big as you could fit in a truck, all about the same size, about 2600 sq. . optimal location for maximum system efficiency.
Twenty years ago you would never get this kind of quality from a modular factory; they were founded to build affordable homes in countries where people couldn’t find a deal and wanted to save money. The modular revolution came with the realization that you can actually achieve better quality and finish in the factory than in the field. That’s why they are so beautiful and no one does it better than Resolution 4.
It wouldn’t be a Treehugger if I didn’t complain about anything, how about not putting a gas stove on an island with a hanging hood?
Post time: Dec-15-2022