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Open Source Housing
No_Weak_Heart writes "The latest issue of Metropolis magazine has an interesting look at the house of the future. The primary focus of the article is on MIT's House_n project and its offshoot - the Open Source Building Alliance. The article discusses potential benefits of adopting a modular, component-based, everyone's-invited approach to building. Houses built via interactive design stategies and mass-cutomization vs. single-purpose structures driven by one ideology."
I live here now and actually just went house shopping a month back to replace my in-law's aging house. They are at the upper end of the spectrum of old houses with a 18 year old house. All new housing in any Japanese metropolitan area is the type of pre-fab crap that I described in my earlier post. It is designed to look nice and be fairly functional, but it is not designed to last.
The perception of Japanese product quality is one of the biggest myths that becomes clearly obvious once you live here for any length of time. Japanese love new things and things are built to reflect that. Cars are disposed of after 5 years, houses are replaced every 10-15. God knows how quickly TV sets go bad around here.
What really gets me is the way Americans seem to drool over Sony products, when Sony is the epitome of this disposable culture. They come out with things (TVs, computers, cameras, etc.)that have all sorts of bells and whistles but quickly become obsolete and broken within a short time frame.
Japanese housing is basically what you described, modular and catalog-based. You show up at the model homes park and take a look at what you too can upgrade your life to. Then you repeat 10 years later when the walls are cracking and the built in cabinets are falling apart.
Like many things out of Japan, modular housing was designed for overseas markets, not so much for the domestic market. Once they prove and stabilize the concept, they market it to other countries. Similar to the 'building-builder' robot construction device that debuted in Yokohama ten years ago. It was originally targeted for China, where they need new high-rises in a hurry, etc.
That being said, modular homes are a bit less expensive. Anywhere from $40-$70/sq ft on the plans I've seen. Of course, that doesn't include foundation and site improvements (water hookups, sewer/septic system, basement + walls, etc.) so figure in about $7,000-$10,0000 for that. Also, the homes are about 90% finished, and need trimming out (gutters, shutters, drywall seams, etc.). That adds about %7-$10/sq ft. Overall, it seems to be around $10-$20/sq ft cheaper than a comparable site built home (which is around $100/sq ft for a good sized house).
Modular homes can easily surpass site built in quality. There's a few reasons for this. First, it's much easier to control quality in a factory than on a job site. Inspectors can easily check the entire progress of a home, not just on a few announced site visits. Factory machinery is more precise than a $15/hour day laborer framer with a circular saw (and if you've ever seen and talked to a typical framing crew, you'd probably not want to move into any house). Modular homes have to be built to withstand transportation and being lifted by a crane, as well as stand without the support of the other parts of the house.
Of course, a good site built home is still that...a well built home. And some modular manafacturers cut corners in materials, and some don't. As with anything else, it pays to do your homework.
Modular homes are taking more and more of the market every day. I think it's where a good chunk of the industry is headed in the near future. Modular homes can look like any other (yes, even that 6,000 sq ft log cabin), and can be customized to a good extent (floor plans, fixtures, cabinets, carpet, etc. normally exterior dimensions are fixed by model).