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	Photo: John Swain

Prefab Becomes Fab

MODERN  DESIGN SLIPS INTO MODULAR HOMES

    Oakland-based architect Michelle Kaufmann’s novel prefabricated housing designs have turned the vision most Americans have of “prefab” houses on end.
    The inspiration for the first of her designs was born out of Kaufmann’s own frustrating Bay Area house-hunting experience. After six months of long-distance marriage (she in San Francisco, he in Los Angeles), Kaufmann and her husband were finally living together in San Francisco. When they started looking in the Bay Area, they came across smaller, older homes that needed lots of work or large homes in new subdivisions that didn’t appeal to them. There was not much in between.
    “We found that most of what’s out there is thoughtless developer subdivisions full of McMansions that are really over-scaled for human beings. When you walk through the models, you can tell that they’ve even had trouble trying to figure out how to furnish them, because they’re so out of scale,” says Kaufmann.
    The couple decided to build their own home and purchased land in Novato. They kept the plan true to their modern-design sensibilities, and they made it as green and sustainable as possible, incorporating lots of natural light, renewable materials like fast-growing wood and bamboo flooring and fewer toxic chemicals in the building process. The home’s excellent energy efficiency comes from the design itself—natural light, superior insulation and a solar-ready roof. It helped that Kaufmann’s husband, Kevin Cullen, is a builder who’s committed to sustainable-building practices. Kaufmann works from home a few days a week and the rest of the time commutes (in her Prius) to Oakland, where her company, Michelle Kaufmann Designs, is headquartered.
    As their house came together, Kaufmann’s friends and colleagues asked whether she could replicate her design for them. “That really got me thinking about whether we could do something like our home in mass production,” she says. She explored off-site home-building technology and realized architects largely ignore a world of resources.
    Kaufmann came up with a standard design based on her own home, which became her firm’s first prefab home option—the Glidehouse. MKD, which employs 16 architects, has since developed three standard prefabricated home designs that challenge the common notion of “prefab” as “trailer home.”
    Many types of buildings fall under the “prefab” umbrella, but primarily it refers to manufactured homes and modular homes. Manufactured homes are what most people know as trailer homes, and this type of housing must meet U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development code, a less-rigid standard than that required of on-site home construction. Modular housing, which includes Kaufmann’s designs, is held to the same stringent on-site building codes as all new housing.
    “They’re built identically to homes built on-site, just in an off-site, controlled environment,” Kaufmann says of her prefab houses. “The only restriction, really, is that it has to be transportable, because once the house is attached to the foundation on-site, it’s considered real estate.”
    Prefab housing is popular in other parts of the world. “It’s very different here than in other countries like Japan and Australia, I think, because they don’t have this misconception that prefab equals trailer homes,” says Kaufmann. “There, when they’re doing a high-end home construction job, they want precision cutting, and they want it built in a controlled, off-site environment.”
    The major benefits of prefab building are that construction delays and waste are minimized. The biggest savings in choosing Kaufmann’s designs is the construction time; her houses can be built in as little as eight to 14 months at a cost comparable to a site-built house.
    MKD offers three prefab house designs, with various bedroom/bathroom configurations. The firm, based in the Metrovation building in Jack London Square, also works on custom projects and housing developments, but MKD is probably best known for the Sunset Breezehouse, which was designed in collaboration with Sunset magazine in 2005. The H-shaped house features a series of courtyards and private gardens that blur interior and exterior spaces. The central courtyard is a glass-enclosed breezeway or porch, and it functions as the main living and dining space between the two wings of the house.
    The three preconfigured home designs make up about 70 percent of MKD’s business, with the other 30 percent being custom-design projects and multiple-family dwellings.
    MKD estimates the construction costs for Glidehouse projects between $185 and $250 per square foot. So, a basic two-bedroom, 1,344 square-foot Glidehouse would run between $250,000 and $340,000. Sunset Breezehouse and mkSolaire projects in most areas cost between $200 and $250 per square foot. These figures don’t include permits and other site-specific costs. (See sidebar, “A Cautionary Tale.”) Total construction costs are generally higher for more complex sites and for sites in high-cost areas such as the greater San Francisco area and Los Angeles. MKD recently purchased its own factory in Seattle, which means the company can produce more stock more quickly.
    The company is currently working on a multiple-family development in Denver and another in San Leandro. The San Leandro project, right off Interstate 880, will include 26 two- and three-bedroom, two-story units with covered parking, private and shared outdoor gardens and courtyards. The units should be completed in summer 2007 and will range from $450,000 to $550,000.
    “We as architects have to rethink ourselves, or else we’re just going to keep complaining about the developers and what they’re doing to the landscape,” she says. “We can do something about it by making thoughtful, sustainable design accessible to more people.”
    Thus far, MKD, established in 2003, has completed construction on 12 prefab homes, all built on the West Coast. In the Bay Area, there are two Glidehouses in Marin County, two in Sonoma County, one in Mendocino County and a Sunset Breezehouse in Walnut Creek. MKD currently has two Glidehouses and 10 Breezehouses under way in the Bay Area, in addition to a few custom projects.
    MKD’s clientele varies widely, including people later in life who are downsizing and care about how their homes are built and are concerned about the environment. Quite a few clients turn to Kaufmann for their second home, wanting a house designed by an architect with an easy construction process. And there are budget-conscious first-, second- and third-time buyers who really want an architect-designed home. Kaufmann’s options are a good middle ground for all.
 “The one thing our firm and all of our clients have in common is a commitment to modular, sustainable and modern design,” says Kaufmann.
    As the firm grows and completes more West Coast projects, Kaufmann hopes to take her designs nationwide. And she’s looking toward making a bigger dent in the new home-construction market by taking on more multiple family dwellings, working side by side with developers who are open to her green vision.
Kaufmann’s designs stand in a couple of museums showing the possibilities of prefab construction—there’s a full-scale replica of a Glidehouse on display at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Sunset Breezehouse is part of an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.        
    Kaufmann’s work has been fea­tured in numerous national publications, including Smithsonian Magazine, Dwell, The Washington Post and Metropolitan Home.  To see her designs online, vist www.mkd-arc.com.