Mechanizing The Manufactured Modern House

Thus far, modern architecture hasn't taken advantage of modern prefab technology -- but an architect in Missouri is looking to change that with a low-cost, modern manufactured house.

1 minute read

October 11, 2005, 12:00 PM PDT

By Brenda Meyer


"Apart from the mobile-home industry, no one turning out houses on an assembly line has made an impact in the housing business. Most mobile homes are aluminum-sided banalities that are supposed to look like traditional suburban houses but fool nobody, and whose sole virtue is that they are cheap. Modern architecture, of course, tends to be expensive. It often looks machine-made and features the latest technology, yet modern houses are almost always built largely by hand, even when they are intended to embody the aesthetic of the computer age."

"...If you buy one of Romero’s L.V. kits, you do not get an entire house. You get the exterior walls and the floors, the roof framing, special assembly tools, and lots of instructions. It is up to builders to construct a foundation according to Romero’s plans, and to add such items as windows, doors, electricity, plumbing, and a roof, for which the architect provides exacting specifications. Buyers pay for shipping their future house on a flatbed truck, which runs roughly $2.25 per mile from Perryville."

Thursday, October 13, 2005 in The New Yorker

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