Green in Medusa

The MoMA PreFab Show

The Cellophane House

I just got back from the Museum of Modern Art's - Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. They are having their member's preview today and the show opens on Sun. July 20th. The exhibition features five contemporary prefabricated houses constructed in the outdoor space to the west of the main Museum building, continuing MoMA's rich history of presenting full-scale architectural projects. Five individuals and architecture firms have been given the opportunity to deploy both commercially viable domestic creations and entirely new, speculative prototypes. Also in the exhibit on the 6th floor of the main building is what I found to be the more interesting part of the show. It is a concise history of prefabricated housing since its origins in 1833. As always the museum had some fascinating original art, sketches and plans by the likes of Frank LLoyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, and even Thomas Edison, who had developed and built prefabricated concrete houses. There are also some very interesting films and archival footage on Prefabrication. Whether you like these architects and the concept of Pre-Fab or not, the show is worth visiting. For me it was a really cool way to spend a hot day with my son.

more after the jump...

SIPS Vs. Modular: Tradeoffs

As their architects and friends we want to congratulate Stephenie and Baldomero and welcome Joaquin to this crazy world of ours. He’s one lucky kid.

Regarding Joaquin’s new house, we’re getting close to reaching a firm number although this pricing process has been especially challenging because for all the reasons B+S have written about to date. This post - long overdue - is to further define consequences of the team’s choice to work with module over SIPs. B+S explained the reasons we all selected modular – no matter how we ran the numbers a modular house is less expensive and has a smaller potential for cost overruns than SIPs. The variations in sustainable considerations – R-value, material content, construction waste – are impressive on both counts and therefore didn’t factor into the decision as much as the cost.

Most of the revisions that came out of our module decision are site and foundation based such as slab-on-grade versus Superiorwall foundation

SIP'S vs. Modular - Insulation and the Building Envelope

The title of this post is me showing off some of the terms I've learned since starting this project. Matthew Radune at Lynn Gaffney Architect has been awesome at giving me lots of undiluted information.

In comparing both SIP's and Modular construction, insulation is a big actor. One of the points on our original brief to architects was that we wanted a well insulated house that would be warm in the winter and cool in the summer. This requires a well insulated and tight building envelope that would limit the amount of air moving through the walls thereby affecting the indoor temperature.

Here is a basic comparison using the materials we are currently looking at working with.

Pre Fab - SIP's vs. Modular

This project is a constant balancing act. Every decision has to be weighed against several other factors that are often in direct opposition to each other, how does it fit within our budget, how green is it, how much embodied energy is attached, how will it wear, how will it look, how much does it cost, how much will it cost "installed" , and then in the end again its how much is it going to cost? There is never a real answer and probably won't be until you pay the final bill. Estimates are just that, estimates. One of the main reasons for wanting to build this house out of SIP's or Modular prefab is that much of the variables of building are taken out because you know that those specific elements will be done hopefully to spec. in the factory at a pre-determined cost. Luckily we have a great architect that designed a house that would be flexible in the future and could be built in a variety of ways including modular.

The idea of Traditional or OVE (Optimum Value Engineered ) stick building, built by hand on site no longer has the appeal it once did. There is a tremendous amount of waste involved when building on site, even with a well intentioned and experienced builder who is committed to building "green". In addition there is the potential nightmare of cost overruns. Steph and I both work in a production environment where there is always a budget to adhere to and nothing makes us more upset than going over-budget, we both pride ourselves for coming in "on budget".

Inspiration - PreFab

Originally we thought of building a PreFab house, there are so many nice ones to choose from: Dwell House, Pinc House, WeeHouses, and many more check out the FabPreFab List . They are all highly customizeable and conceivably you could configure them from your computer leaving you to just worry about site prep, foundation and utility tie in. On some models you could specify that they be built with sustainable materials. Not a bad idea until you start to add it up, even on the cheapest side we were looking at over $300 per square foot which is totally out of our price range considering we originally wanted a home in the 2000 sf range. They are a great option as the entire structure is pre-fabricated off site trucked in and installed in a matter of weeks instead months. We realized at this point we should start interviewing architects and see if there was a way around spending that much money while still achieving everything we wanted.