I would not call that a Prefab house. If you are refering to the aluminum extrusion as Prefab, then I guess you'd also have to call finished lumber Prefab. In addition, the amount sitework and systems integrated into the slab is completly counter to the reason why people are drawn to Prefab. Still a cool house and interesting blog to read.

I do not believe this house is designed with 'eco' in mind. I believe this 'house' is designed as a second countryside summer vacation home. As such, it is inherently off-grid. And if it is off-grid, it has to incorporate renewable energy technologies and other 'green' technologies to function conveniently.

An all glass house is not a design concept that fits with environmental architectural design. It is contradictory to a number of passive solar design principles. Such a house is difficult to keep cool in many instances and difficult to keep warm in many instances. It creates energy inefficiencies. I see this house being extremely difficult to keep warm on winter nights - unless one is willing to burn a LOT of something or the other. Glass is an extremely bad insulator, even when you have three layers, low e-coating, and argon or krypton gas infills, in comparison to any number of other wall insulation systems. Any architect knows this. Of course, if the house is only going to be occupied in summer, than this is not a problem. And that is why it is not a problem, because it is a summer vacation home. As a summer home, it also explains the use of opaque glass on east/west walls - this helps eliminate overheating in summer. In winter, the opaque glass is detrimental as it eliminates useful solar heat energy from entering the house.

Another thing that convinces me that this is a summer home for exclusively faraway and isolated countryside areas is the fact that all walls are glass. Would anyone live in such a home in a city or suburb? The lack of privacy means it is only acceptable by most people in a location where the likelyhood of anyone being able to see the house is next to nil. And an all glass house is also convenient for secluded countryside homes since it enables its inhabitants to have the very best views of nature and feel part of it.

This is not designed to be an eco-house; it is designed to be a secluded countryside vacation home which happens to have some eco features.

While all of Houston's assertions are correct for ordinary glass (which includes Low-E coat for heat retention in cold months) all cards are in the air if the architect would specify solar gain control coated glass on sun-facing aspects of building envelope.

Forget the name of the Bauhaus architect who built of number of all glass homes for wealthy patrons in the US. Back in the 70's I think. What typically happens when the family fades from the home and sells off the surrounding buffer land is that surrounding development makes privacy impossible. They get turned into museums or whatever.

There's more glass but the general form is very reminescent of the Koch and Koch solar houses of the 1940s Midwest USA. They were well ahead of their time.

I wonder if this Koch is related to those Kochs.

The question of the view into the glass house may be addressed by the "Outfits"--laminates which allow a lot of light but inhibitat nosy neighbors.

Probably glass is not the most efficient design for a house in Chicago or Detroit, but a lot of places would be appropriate for a house with effective natural cooling and a moderate solar powered heating for the nippy days. There is no single magic bullet.

There is no 'magic bullet' design for all locations, as mentioned. Each location needs to be taken into consideration and its particular macro and micro climate analyzed when designing and building the house. While this pre-fab does allow for some modifications of interior layout, the basic structure of glass and metal remain the same - regardless of whether a customer plans to build somewhere where the house makes 'green' sense or somewhere where it does not. It is true that this house may make sense in some places, examples being the Bahamas or Canary Islands or Belize, etc., but that does not mean that most of these houses WILL be built in appropriate locations. It makes more sense to assume that most will not be.

As was said, there is no 'green bullet' house design. This is one reason I generally disfavor prefab. It takes a standard design and makes it easy and cheap to put in any location, regardless of whether that design is appropriate for that location or not. To then make a one-size-fits-all pre-fab design of all glass and metal, a pairing which makes 'green' sense only in a few limited parts of the first world (and the people who will buy these will be predominantly from the first world and the locations where these homes will be placed will be predominately in the first world), is even more environmentally questionable. Which leads me to restate that I believe that environmental design considerations were not what drove the design of this house. This was not designed as a green home. And whether any individual one of these will be a 'green' house will depend on where it is located and the modifications made to the basic design and systems used. Not to mention what the purpose of the 'house' is - a six week out of the year getaway?

However, I do agree that privacy is an issue that has accesible solutions. And excessive solar radiation gain problems can also be dealt with through special systems, such as solar heat gain glass coatings. However, SHG coatings do nothing to block conductive flow of heat through the glass. Glass walls remain highly inefficient for a house trying to maintain an indoor temperature higher than that of the outside, especially if the temperature differential is more than just a few degrees C. Even if a solar heating system was able to supply most yearly heating, adding walls with higher insulation levels might make it possible to provide ALL necessary heating through solar. Not to mention that some locations, like where I live, require insulation to keep heat in during the winter and heat OUT during the summer. In my case (central Spain) opening windows for 'cooling' breezes just lets hot air in and quickly supercharges the available thermal mass. In any case, green house design - with regards to heating and cooling - is about trying to minimize energy used (by building a small home, reducing waste of heat or 'cool', and improving overall efficiency) and maximize renewable energy such as the sun or wind to achieve heating and cooling goals.

This will be a second house, true, but it's in the backyard of the first house, in a dense suburb in Orange County, CA.

A key feature of the design--classic among SoCal modernist architecture at least since Schindler's house--is the integration of interior and exterior living spaces.

I, too, have my questions about the definition of prefab, and the real priority the architects place on either sustainability or scalable affordability in this design, but I took a look at the facts of the situation before reflexively eco-harshing on it.

'I took a look at the facts of the situation before reflexively eco-harshing on it.'

I am glad that we both agree that this needs to be done.

35 weeks and this 'prefab' house is still under construction? WTF?