by Kate Stohr

From Le Corbusier to IKEA, the dream of prefab mass housing has had its adherents and
detractors. Now a new generation of architects is taking up the prefab cause. But is First World architecture exportable to the developing world?

A few years ago my partner, Cameron Sinclair, and I got a call from a museum interested in exhibiting low-cost, transitional housing for refugees and those displaced by war or natural disaster. We run a small non-profit organization that connects architects with humanitarian projects and had recently finished a design competition to develop just such a shelter for refugees returning to war-torn Kosovo. This was right up our alley. Could we put them in touch with architects who had built a prototype of their entry for a summer-long exhibition, the director asked. No problem, we said, pointing them towards the work of Australian architect Sean Godsell, who—using his own funds—had just put the finishing touches on FutureShack, his prototype of a shipping-container- turned-temporary-home.

Godsell wasn’t the first to convert this mainstay of modern commerce into low-cost housing, but he’d accomplished the task with a certain utilitarian finesse. His design could be readily mass-produced and quickly assembled. Skylights allowed for light and ventilation; telescoping legs allowed it to be sited without difficulty, even on uneven terrain. Perhaps more importantly, with its parasol roof and plywood-lined interior, Godsell’s design implicitly asked: Shouldn’t all homes be beautiful to live in—even the most temporary?

There was only one problem: Getting it there.

Building a second prototype from scratch locally was out of the question. The museum needed Future Shack yesterday. Suddenly, the curators found themselves in the odd position of shipping a shipping container. It was one logistical hurdle after another, from clearing the container through customs to hiring a crane to heave the four-ton structure over their gates and into the exhibition space. Then, once on site, the architect guided trained construction workers through the process of re-assembly.

The finished home was beautiful. Spare but comfortable, every inch honed for maximum utility. With streamlined fixtures that seemed to have slid off the pages of a magazine, the miniature cabin encapsulated
everything the Modernist homesteader could possibly
need.

But at what cost? This might have been transitional
housing, but it was hardly inexpensive.

Ever since Le Corbusier first suggested the assembly-line house, architects have been pre-occupied with finding a solution to the world’s housing crisis through mass manufacturing. In the 1950’s French architect Jean Prouvé developed modular houses for post-colonial Africa that could be shipped, erected, dismantled, and shipped again like an industrial-scale erector set. At about the same time in postwar America, which was suffering its own housing crisis, inventor Carl Strandlund began producing his all-steel Lustron home at a plant tooled to produce 100 units a day.

Over time, manufactured housing earned a reputation
for shoddy design and construction. The words “pre-fab” and “housing” came to connote mobile homes and trailer parks. But now a new generation of certified turtleneck-wearing architects is taking pre-fab back to its Modernist roots with some promising alternatives to the doublewide.

Take Alchemy Architects’ factory-built WeeHouse,
a tiny 336 square foot dwelling that costs just
US$49,000 and arrives on a flatbed truck. Or Michelle
Kaufmann’s “green living” Glidehouse; it comes in two,
three, or four bedroom configurations with a choice of
energy options from solar panels to geothermal, or wind power. Or Rocio Romero’s LV Kit Home, Modernism to the masses for just under US$33,000.

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