City Home News

The idea of pre-fabricated housing goes back quite a way. A process perfected by the U.S. military during World War II was applied by at Levittown and other subdivisions. The appeal was and is obvious as the cost of a comfortable home is reduced dramatically when numerous homes are produced using standardized parts, specialized labor, rapidly and even off-site.

Before that, Sears and other companies offered standard, ready-to-assemble homes. The earliest prefab house may have been 400 years ago when a wood house broken into panels was shipped from England to Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Today prefab homes are again gaining in popularity. In recent days Ikea announced the company would enter the prefab market. Smaller companies offer pre-built homes that are delivered as placed on your lot. Michael Graves is apparently working on a prefab house for Target. Gone are the days when prefab meant standardized and boring. Today that’s the story of the suburban monster home. A prefab home today and in the future will mean customized.

Yet in all the history of the prefab house, from Sears to Ikea anyway, prefab homes have been anything but urban. A city town home is, in essence, two rectangles stacked onto each other. These fit in-between like shapes. Many of these homes are existing, but some need replaced or have been lost. It is a great challenge to provide affordable homes to the masses. While we have record homeownership in the United States today, it would seem we have provided unaffordable homes to the masses—foreclosures are also at a record. Let’s meet the challenge of both living smart and building smart by creating affordable and energy-efficient urban prefab designs.

Read the expanded column Dec. 1, 2005 at http://www.newcolonist.com