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."

Comments

Re:Modular Housing?

[djupedal]

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.

Re:If you want a prefabricated house

[shyster]

Having done some rearch into this area recently, I have to disagree. First off, manafactured and/or mobile homes are trailers. Factory built or modular homes are the made in the factory then transported to site type, and they are built to the same codes as site built (aka stick built) homes...manafactured homes are not. They're basically a site built house that's built in a factory, borken apart into 2-4 modules, and transported on site and put back together. See here for more info.

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).