As you may have heard, the Museum of Science and Industry yesterday announced the construction of a green “smart home” as a part of the museum’s 75th anniversary celebration.
According to the Sun-Times, the three-story house will incorporate green products and materials, such as dual-flush toilets, cement siding, LED fixtures and a green roof, into a design intended to maximize natural lighting and airflow.
The six-piece mkSolaire was designed by Michelle Kaufmann of Oakland, Calif., and will be constructed at a Coachmen Industries factory in Decatur, Ind. Workers will assemble the house prior to the exhibit’s opening on May 8. The exhibit will run through January 2009.
Stay tuned — hopefully we’ll get a chance to talk with Kaufmann about her design and get a video of our walk-through posted on the Yo in the coming months. In the meantime, you can keep up with the exhibit’s development by reading Kaufmann’s blog.
Is the rendering showing a “green” concrete block wall in front of the home?
You never know – it could be cob.
Or a genetically-modified hedge.
While I’m happy to see green, modular, aesthetically pleasing construction getting more attention, I really wish someone would create a beautiful modern home that was actually affordable for most middle-class buyers. Kaufmann’s website estimates the cost of the solaire at about 626K (without the cost of land, I believe). When is IKEA or some maverick architect going to make some $100/square foot stylish modular home available in the U.S.? If someone knows of something in this price range that already exists (other than a Katrina cottage, which I doubt would blend well on an urban lot in Chicago), please let me know!
Danny, I assume you’re not familiar with BoKlok – IKEA’s housing arm;
http://www.boklok.com/
BoKlok translates to Live Sensibly more or less.
FabPreFab has a lot of other links to prefabs, but mainly in a modernist idiom. But very few to any multi-family which might be appropriate on a city lot (sort of a new take on a two or three flat).
For decades, many have been anticipating widespread adoption of modular factory builts. Thousands of smart people have taken a shot at it, but it never sticks. Maybe, by the time enough semi-custom features are added to make them not obviously mass produced single wides bolted together, you’re pretty much building them in a non-automated fashion, and as long as you’re hand assembling everything, you’re better off doing it in the field and avoiding lots of overhead. It’s a beautiful thing when economics defeats automated conformity.
I did some research on the prices (in Stockholm, most expensive market in Sweden);
The largest apartment sells for approx $170,225.00 and the house will set you back about $276,000.00. I think these prices are pretty much middle of the pack.
Most (90 some %) single-family houses in Scandinavia are prefabricated and have been for the past 50 odd years and are extremely well built (no vinyl siding to be seen – the most common siding is board and batten) and extremely energy efficient.
Manufactured housing has been widespread in the US since WWII. Think Levittown and most suburban developments of any size. Take a look at how those puppies are actually built.
We don’t have it in Chicago because … fill in the blanks.
Nope, sorry Joe, Levittown was stick-built. With massive economies of scale, but still stick. There is, in fact, manufactured housing going up in Chicago in the form of panalized walls – surprisingly common in medium sized developments.
Depending on how you want to define “manufactured and stick building” there is more than just walls.
Many suburban developments of any scale use roofs and walls built in factories. Typically the factories we utilize around here are in Wisconsin.
I come from a family of drunken carpenters who are missing digits on their hands and factory built is generally better quality than on site built. The quality is more exact. In many developments cranes put the walls or roofs into place right off the trucks. Better quality, less waste, faster construction times, and less expensive.
Manufactured components does not equal manufactured housing. Trusses, panels, windows, cabinets…are components.
When the pieces are pre-wired, pre-plumbed, pre-drywalled, I’d say you’re approaching manufactured housing.
pk has a pretty good understanding of this issue.
Dwell Magazine took up the cause of green pre-fab modern houses years ago, and they occasionally re-visit it. Howevever, they are also criticized quite routinely for presenting houses that only the rich could afford. When it comes to single-family houses, Architecture is now largely a profession only at the service of the rich. A friend of mine recently got a bunch of national attention and design awards for a house he designed in Wisconsin, and he told me that he almost decided not to take the job because the constrution budget was only a half million. Something like 90% or more of all buildings built in the U.S. today are not designed by architects, and you can see the results. Too many have become “stamps for hire”.
One problem with green construction is that buyers are still for some reason unwilling to pay a higher upfront cost in exchange for cost savings forever after. I suppose it will take some time for financial arrangements to acknowledge the reality that energy, water, and waste disposal costs (plus maintenance and operations, which are also cheaper for green buildings) can comprise a significant chunk of the true cost of a building.