Tag: CNN

by Oscar Holland, CNN

On a building site about 50 miles outside the Philippine capital of Manila, construction is underway on a completely new 346-acre town.
But much of the work is taking place elsewhere. In fact, most of the 6,000 homes in the development, called Batulao Artscapes, will be prefabricated — built in factories and then transported to the site.

Expected to complete by 2020, the masterplan comprises 12 different styles of home set across four “villages.” Prospective residents can choose from prefabs designed by notable creatives, from artist David Salle to the musician-turned-interior-designer Lenny Kravitz.

But given that modular homes were initially created to deliver affordable housing — quickly and at volume –what can an entire town of designer prefabs offer that conventional settlement can’t.

A different model

For Dutch designer Marcel Wanders — whose “Eden” house is being made available in Batulao Artscapes — a large-scale approach makes prefabs more viable for both designers and buyers.

“The problem with prefab housing is that while you can buy the house and build it quickly, you have a lot on your plate,” he said in a phone interview.

“You still need electricity, water, sewage — it needs a lot of stuff. We’d basically be creating half a product. So I thought, ‘Why wouldn’t we make a prototype for a developer (who can) build and sell the houses?’

“Now you can have a prefab house that has everything you want — electricity and so on — that is organized by the developer.” 

Renowned as an interior and product designer, Wanders was initially approached to work on the garden design at Batulao Artscapes. The Eden houses marks his first venture into prefab design.

The Dutchman’s glass-walled houses come in three distinct styles. Inhabitants are able to customize their purchase with different color schemes and finishing materials. And while the homes will be constructed in a factory, they were designed with the Philippine climate in mind.  

“They have these two big colonnades which are there to keep the roof up — but they also turn the outdoor space into an indoor space,” Wanders said. “In the Philippines, the outside is great, but you want to be protected from the sun. So (the houses have) shading and roofing that makes them livable, with a big tree on the inside too.  

“Behind the glass you’ll have your bedroom, a small living room and your inside kitchen. But as soon as you open the glass walls, the kitchen suddenly has an outdoor area. 

“Then you have a really big home for the price of a small one.” 

The economics of prefabs 

This rationale may apply at the lower end of the development’s offerings — the cheapest homes are being sold for 2.5 million Philippine pesos (approximately $50,000). But with the most expensive units expected to go for 26 million pesos (over $1 million), the project also reflects a growing market for luxury prefabs.

Attitudes towards this once utilitarian form of housing are changing, according to Sheri Koones, a journalist and author of six books on prefabricated housing.

“It’s just a much better way of building,” she said in a phone interview. “Now, people are building not only inexpensive homes, but designer houses. The most important thing is that you can have your house more quickly. You don’t have mold and a lot of the problems that you would have with wood that has been exposed to the elements.   

“When they first started building modular houses, they were very simple. But they’ve just become much more intricate. Years ago, there were things that they couldn’t do, and today they can do almost anything.”

But if customers fork out for high-end units, one of the primary benefits of prefab housing — namely lower costs — may be undermined, explained Ryan E. Smith, an Associate Professor and Director of the Integrated Technology & Architecture Center (ITAC) at the University of Utah.

“The whole game is about value creation,” he said in a phone interview. 

“Whether it’s one house or thousands of units, the question is, ‘If I do more in a factory does it add value to the overarching proposition?’ If it doesn’t, then you don’t do it, rather than chasing some kind of idealism or the novelty that comes from (having a house that was) made in a factory. 

“Modular construction takes about 30 to 60 percent more material to put into the building in order to stabilize it — we’ve done that research. But the money you save in lifecycle costs — time and labor — is how you’re able to compete,” said Smith, who is also a trained architect and author of the book “Offsite Architecture: Constructing the Future.”

Nonetheless, Smith said that prefab developments on the scale of Batulao Artscapes have not been attempted “in recent times” — meaning that the sums may yet add up.

“The volume that they’re showing presents a real opportunity,” he said of the Philippine development. “This kind of (project) is rare, therefore it’s hard to tell whether they can capitalize on it and deliver on their promise.”

A ‘livable art park’ 

There are certainly plenty of promises being made. 

In addition to high-end prefabs, Batulao Artscapes is offering extensive public art facilities designed by the likes of Pritzker Prize-winning architects Christian de Portzamparc and Jean Nouvel, the man behind the Copenhagen Concert Hall and the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

The firm responsible for the project, Revolution Precrafted, claims that it is offering people a rare chance to live in a home designed by a leading architect.

It also hopes to create a community of likeminded people, according to Robbie Antonio, the CEO of Revolution Precrafted and managing director of Century Properties, the Philippine real estate giant bankrolling the $1.1 billion project.

“(The residents will all share) the same DNA of people wanting to live in beautiful homes and beautiful structures,” he said in a phone interview. 

A keen art collector who once commissioned Dutch ‘starchitect’ Rem Koolhas to design his Manila mansion, Antonio says that he was inspired by public art spaces like Naoshima, Japan’s “art island.”

“There was no real master plan for the world’s first livable art park,” he said. “To be surrounded by this (art) and beautiful homes is not present anywhere in the world. 

“I’m going to personally curate everything, so that’s an integral part of the business plan.” 

 

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Source:  https://www.cnn.com/style/article/prefabricated-homes-batulaoartscapes/index.html

by Katy Scott, CNN

If you’re looking to hole up in the middle of nowhere, there’s a hut in a box for that.

Back in the days of gloom post World War Two, prefab homes — structures prefabricated in sections in a factory and then assembled on site — were built en masse as temporary solutions for those who had been “bombed out”.

Just over 70 years later, prefab houses are still considered affordable alternatives to building homes from scratch.

Prefab pioneer Jean Prouvé designed his “demountable house” in the 1940s as a potential solution for the housing crisis in France. These inexpensive homes were rapidly built from steel and wood, assembled by hand, and supported by a two-legged load-bearing structure.

Today prefabricated buildings are used as temporary relief for those who have lost their homes to natural disasters, refugees, as well as a quick fix for housing crises.

But prefab is increasingly becoming an attractive option for constructing everything from cabins in the wilderness to high-end designer homes for city slickers.

One Canadian company has even gone as far as creating DIY cabins which come straight out of the box, complete with step-by-step instructions on how to assemble them.

Hut-in-a-box

Backcountry Hut Company grew from a need for recreational refuge points for outdoorsy folk in remote locations.

Avid backcountry adventurer, Wilson Edgar, dreamt up the idea of customizable huts that could be easily pieced together on-site by a group of people.

“When someone takes a house project today they basically give up control as soon as they start the project,” Edgar tells CNN. “This is putting that control back in their hands.”

Edgar teamed up with Principal Architect of Leckie Studio Architecture + Design, Michael Leckie, to tackle the design.

The huts come in two distinct styles — backcountry and frontcountry — each with multiple configurations.

The base model is a studio loft measuring 191 square feet, with a kitchen and living area on the ground level and sleeping quarters for two to four people on the top floor.

However, modules can be combined and the hut can be extended to fit up to 30 people.

“One of the values in the system is that it is scalable and mass customizable,” explains Leckie, referring to various interior fitout options and exterior finishes.

This, according to Leckie, is one of the key differences between their huts and other “more rigid” cabins. Another is the ease with which it can be assembled.

“The building components are designed to such a size that they can be lifted by two people and put into place similar to almost like lego blocks,” says Leckie.

This is not to say the “kit of parts” can be slung over your shoulder like a sack of tent poles. In fact, the pre-module shell, timber frame skeleton, window system, doors, cladding, and interior fitouts arrive in a 40-foot shipping container and need to be lifted by helicopter to locations inaccessible by roads.

While the hut’s structural components cost $150 dollars a square foot, the interior fitouts can add a significant amount, depending on the client’s taste.

Is prefab the answer?

Prefab homes are often considered to cut the spiralling costs of building a home, as well as the time it takes to build.

“For the average person building a custom home there are so many unknowns, and I think that a lot of people really struggle with the perceived lack of control through the process,” says Leckie.

“What we have here is a product that comes ultimately delivered, it’s a fixed-price solution.”

However, architect Charlie Lazor of Lazor Office — a design firm that specializes in the design and prefabrication of dwellings — is of the opinion that prefab isn’t always the answer.

“There is a perception that prefab will solve the problem of the cost of a home,” Lazor tells CNN.

“There are benefits to be had, and more benefits if the stars align, but it’s not a silver bullet, and it’s not going to solve a budget deficit.”

In 2005 the Minneapolis-based architect first introduced his panelized FlatPak house — a pre-fabricated, configurable house system.

Having designed and built many modular, FlatPak and stick built homes over the years, Lazor explains that there are multiple ways to do prefabrication. It all depends on the circumstances.

“For very remote work, the modular method is better as labour doesn’t exist, or has to come from very far away. So you have to get as much as you possibly can get done off site, and send it as complete as possible.”

One of the biggest challenges Lazor faces, however, is misconceived ideas about the benefits of prefabrication.

“The time advantage can be there but I wouldn’t say it’s a significant enough reason why someone should do a prefabricated house,” he says.

A prefab-ulous future

“As the market for prefabricated structures grow, so does the market for high-end precrafted work,” Robbie Antonio, CEO of Revolution Precrafted, tells CNN.

Revolution Precrafted commissions “starchitects” such as Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, Philip Johnson, Ron Arad, Marcel Wanders, and Christian de Portzamparc, to design luxury prefab homes, pavilions, and even furniture.

“Prefabrication no longer means cookie-cutter construction, or one-size fits all design,” says Antonio. “It is moving towards a space where traditional construction methods give way to high-precision, and high-quality architecture.”

 

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