Prefabricating Fabulous

Rethinking Home: Prefabrication, Downsizing, and the Future of Living

The sales brochure for the house above might read:
“Fabulous Prefabricated Home! Open modern floor plan, large windows with lake vistas, wraparound porch with white-fenced yard, multifunctional spaces, neutral colors, and (judging by the antenna) excellent television reception.”

At 2.6 meters cubed, this home is designed for one or two occupants and priced at approximately $75,000. A real find, right? That depends entirely on what kind of home you’re accustomed to.

What We’re Used To Shapes What We Want

Our preferences are deeply influenced by what has historically been available to us. In America, we’ve been sold the idea that bigger is better: bigger houses, bigger SUVs, bigger lifestyles. Developers, designers, retailers, marketers, and even governments pushed us to consume more—and we did.

But in today’s economy, downsizing is in. Whether by choice or necessity, many are selling large homes and cars, rethinking what they can afford. Downsizing often feels like a step backward, as though we’re no longer “moving forward” in life. Yet I would ask: moving forward to what? Backward is a direction too. Re-examining how we live and what we value may be one of the most important tasks we face. As designers, we do this daily—ensuring plans, sections, and products meet codes for accessibility, usability, and sustainability.

Efficiency and Community

Take motor homes, for example. They may not be fully accessible, but they embody efficient use of space, shared utilities, and a sense of community living. Clean them up, add a touch of creativity—say, a fire pole—and they’d likely sell quickly.

The future of housing, however, won’t be found in traditional suburban neighborhoods or 2.6-meter micro-houses alone. It will be dictated by social, economic, and global pressures we can scarcely imagine today.

Prefabrication’s Return

One approach already making a comeback is prefabrication. Its advantages are clear: lower construction costs, faster delivery times, and reduced environmental impact.

A particularly intriguing trend is the recycling of shipping containers. Their modular framework aligns well with foundations and other building systems. Their elongated orientation naturally lends itself to organized living spaces and directional views.

Fear of the New

Still, living in a shipping container may feel unsettling. But the fear isn’t really about the container—it’s about losing what we’ve grown accustomed to. Perhaps that’s why designers added the white fence to the micro-house: a symbolic bridge between the familiar and the new.

Better, Not Bigger

By living within our means and designing within parameters that meet real needs, we can achieve lifestyle successes absent from modern suburbia. If we choose to simplify our lifestyles and build smarter, more efficient buildings—embracing the idea that bigger is not better, better is better—we may not just survive the next few years, but thrive in them.

 

The Architecture of Distraction

Architecture in the Age of Distraction

The Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas was conceived as a way to breathe new life into Downtown Las Vegas. Suspended 90 feet above the street, a canopy of 12.5 million bulbs transforms four blocks into an outdoor theater of light and sound. On the hour, dazzling displays of color and motion momentarily pull hundreds of gamblers away from their losses. As successful as this spectacle has been for revitalizing downtown, it raises a troubling question: why must our buildings—or the things we attach to them—serve as distractions from architecture itself?

From Inspiration to Interruption

Great architecture has long been a source of inspiration and contemplation. Yet in today’s hyper-connected society, something as “static” as a building struggles to compete. Screens, tickers, and digital billboards now adorn façades, clamoring for attention. This relentless media onslaught risks overshadowing the quiet power of design, reducing architecture to little more than a backdrop for spectacle.

The Age of Distraction

Are we so immersed in smartphones, GPS screens, streaming radios, laptops, and tablets that we no longer notice the world around us? One study at a well-known university found that people are 50% less likely to notice a clown on a unicycle when using portable devices. While not everyone cares about clowns on bikes, the point is clear: technology narrows our awareness, even of the extraordinary.

We are so plugged into the electronic age that we are unplugging ourselves from our surroundings. For architects and designers, this shift is alarming. Soon, the argument for great building design may be lost—not because design has failed, but because the 50-foot television mounted above the entrance has become the true focal point.

Architecture vs. Media

Designers must now acknowledge that traditional architectural influences are no longer the sole drivers of form. Instead, “technological distraction” increasingly shapes façades and aesthetics. Consider the zero-energy GreenPix media wall at Beijing’s Xicui entertainment complex: the façade is stripped of detail, relying entirely on media content to define its identity. In effect, the building’s “style” is closer to that of a drive-in movie theater than to any architectural tradition.

A Cautionary Future

 As a society, we are rushing toward a plugged-in future with potentially dangerous consequences. Pixar’s Wall-E offers a chilling allegory: aboard the starship Axiom, humans are so dependent on screens and hover chairs that obesity and obliviousness dominate. Only catastrophe forces them to reconnect—with each other, with their environment, and with the simple realization that, right in the center of the deck, there has always been a pool.

Challenging Expectations

Challenging Perception: When Architecture Defies Expectation

People form opinions based on what they see. It is natural to like or dislike the patterns of light and shadow that stream into our eyes. Yet our visual perceptions are often shaped—and sometimes distorted—by preconceived notions and past experiences. We instinctively compare new encounters to what we already know. If something doesn’t fit the mental program we’ve built, we resist it. The familiar feels safe; the unknown unsettles us.

Designers and the Unknown

Designers, however, are drawn to the unfamiliar. We pay attention when ideas bend the rules or reshape our understanding. These provocations spark curiosity, even compelling us to linger, to study, to read further.

Designers contemplate objects deeply: their existence, their shape and function, their relationship to other objects, and the reasons behind their form. Yet even designers struggle when confronted with works that defy classification. Architecture education emphasizes style categories—classical, modern, postmodern, gothic, neoclassical—each tied to a time, place, and rationale. But classification itself imposes limits. Can a design be both modern and classical? Can styles be blended effectively? Most would say yes, though opinions diverge on how—and whether—the results succeed.

Melting Buildings and Dancing Houses

Consider Peter Delavie’s design for France’s Anthem Company building. During construction, he draped tarpaulins over the façade, depicting full-scale images of a building melting and deforming. More art than architecture, perhaps, but undeniably provocative. The installation challenged the notion of definable style, playing with perceptions of order and shifting expectations of what architecture can be. Its distortion created visual complexity, and with it, a desire to understand.

Frank Gehry’s Dancing House in Prague offers a parallel. Like Delavie’s installation, it unsettles expectations of structure, balance, and order. Gehry’s deconstructivist approach employs twisted structural systems, a wrapped glass skin, and exaggerated punched windows. Nicknamed “Fred and Ginger,” the building’s playful form stands in sharp contrast to the neo-renaissance backdrop of its neighbors. Yet the juxtaposition works because Gehry’s warped elements still respect proportion, relationship, and structure—fundamental principles that anchor the design.

The Environment for Thought

Unexpected designs succeed not because they are conventionally beautiful, but because they challenge the expected. They create environments to inhabit, yes, but more importantly, they create environments for thought. By unsettling our assumptions, they invite us to reconsider what architecture is, what it can be, and how perception itself shapes our experience of space.

 

Remote Controls, TV Dinners and Tea

In an effort to be more competitive within an ever increasingly difficult marketplace, designers feel compelled to add superfluous options and additional functionality to their designs. In the end, these additional layers of interaction only add complexity to the design and, if not carefully handled, dilute the core function of the design. In Architecture, a thorough understanding of the elements within the environment and their interaction with the occupants is a critical aspect in controlling the environment we’re creating. Without this understanding, designers run the risk of diluting the core function of that building, causing the interaction between occupant and building to dissolve.

During the design process careful efforts should be made in researching how the end product will be used and interacted with. The need to wrap a remote control with paper to limit the functionality of its design suggests an inherent need to eliminate the unwanted and simplify the task. The functions of on, off, volume up and volume down are necessities within the interaction of the design. The added complexity of alternate functionalities that are similar (e.g. fast forward, skip, advance, scan, Play x2, jump, FF, and >) are sold to us as additional features, but are arguably only there to fill up space on the face of the remote.

As building designers, we are continually thinking about ways to improve design and our environment. In today’s technological society, the challenge has become how to add creativity, interactivity, and functionality to the physical spaces without distracting from the essence of the design.

Through the articulation of a set of principles that apply to the creation of the physical space, we can control the experience and the participant’s perceptions. This does not mean that we should limit the complexity of the design or the systems of the architecture. It means we have to be knowledgeable of how the spaces interact, influence and control the experience. Sometimes, the only way to research how we will perceive a space or interact with the elements within it is to build it.

The owners of Inamo restaurant, in the heart of London’s Soho, have built an environment which experiments with the experiences associate with dining and the interactions between participant and expectation. Offering interactive menus and entertainment projected directly onto the dining table, the owners of Inamo have added a visual layer of complexity to a traditionally intimate experience, challenging the preconceived notions of what dining is about. The physical act of food consumption is catapulted into a visually stimulating, multimedia assault on the senses, literally blending the image of your dinner and the entertainment.

The basic idea isn’t new. In the 70’s, TV dinners brought together the functionality of dining and watching television. The influence of technology on the dining experience has and will forever change our lives. What the designers of Inamo have done differently is to aggressively overlap and blending together the visual differences of the dinner and media. They are forcing an interaction between the act of eating and being entertained.

But, as with the construction paper over the remote control, I wonder if we need some form of editing from the barrage of media overtaking every aspect of our lives. Building environments should not make specific demands on those who choose to participate unless the participants request such demands. I wonder if the owners of Inamo offer umbrella shades for those who are interested in blocking out the image of their Facebook page from their salad.

The design of the teapot is an example that blends complex forms with a rather simple function, making tea. Here, the designers chose not to include a LCD screen on the side of the pot to check your email while you wait for the water to boil. The purity of the idea is seamless with the end result. The superfluous functions have been edited in the design process resulting in, what I suspect, is a product that makes a great cup of tea.