Loblolly House: Pictures at Last
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 01.10.07
We have been waiting to see the photographs of the Loblolly House since the tease from Wired last week. Now Kieran Timberlake have put them up and we can finally see if the house lived up to the hype. The house is based on a new twist on prefabricated assembly: "The house is composed entirely of off-site fabricated elements and ready-made components, assembled from the platform up in less than six weeks. Specification is no longer conceived and structured about the sixteen divisions of the CSI that organizes thousands of parts that make up even a small house. Instead, the conception and detailing are formed about four new elements of architecture: the scaffold, the cartridge, the block and equipment. The aluminum scaffold system, coupled with an array of connectors, provide both the structural frame and the means to connect cartridges, blocks and equipment to that frame with only the aid of a wrench."
"The assembly process begins with off-site fabricated floor and ceiling panels, termed "smart cartridges." They distribute radiant heating, hot and cold water, waste water, ventilation, and electricity through the house. Fully integrated bathroom and mechanical room modules are lifted into position. Exterior wall panels containing structure, insulation, windows, interior finishes and the exterior wood rain screen complete the cladding. The west wall is an adjustable glazed system with two layers: interior accordion-style folding glass doors and exterior polycarbonate-clad hangar doors that provide an adjustable awning as well as weather and storm protection."
"This methodology confronts not only the question of how we assemble our architecture, but our obligation to assume responsibility for its disassembly. Just as the components may be assembled at the site swiftly with a wrench, so may they be disassembled swiftly, and most importantly, whole. Instead of the stream of decomposed debris that comprises much of what we are left with to recycle today, this house poses a far more extensive agenda of wholesale reclamation. It is a vision in which our architecture, even as it is disassembled at some unknown moment, can be relocated and reassembled in new ways from reclaimed parts."
Yet another half-million dollar prefab home that will go nowhere.
Maybe the company will luck out and Leo DiCaprio will buy one for his resort home.
Interesting terminology used, but six weeks? You can build a traditional home from the ground up in that time. What am I missing?
LA: my day job is in the prefab biz, and after a house is set we still need 8 to 12 weeks to get the electricians, heating contractors and drywall touchup guys in to finish. Outside of a subdivision where all of the trades follow each others heels, it is pretty difficult to get something of quality finished in less than six weeks.
Just wondering why they put it up on the stilts.
LA: Flood Plain.
Brennan : from what I understand of the WIRED article the point of this project is not only to make a home - but to begin to standardize the connections and the way these will work together. so once the standard is out there, there can be many companies that will make parts for these.
They pretty much want to make a big custom built home into a system of modular items. It's like the univac turning into today's color coded card based computers.
Chris : it is also to reduce the actual physical "footprint" of the home.
We sneer at "half-million dollar homes" but here in San Diego you'd be pressed to find a new home for less than 300,000.
As the cost of land keeps going up, the cost of the house matters less and so people spend more on them.
For instance, look at Japan. Land is so valuable that by the time you can actually afford a piece of land, you might as well tear down the perfectly good home that's already there and build your dream palace. I think Japan leads the world in housing starts per capita by a factor of 3 or something ridiculous.
Traditional, prefab, and factory built. Prefab doesn't have the waste of traditional, bolts together with simple tools, but still depends on tradesmen, takes a long time, and seems to be no cheaper than traditional. Factory built homes, aka mobile homes, are built using assembly line techniques, are trucked to the site, plugged in, and are ready to move in to. No tradesmen needed, installed in a day.
Google "Park Model RV". You'll be surprised at what you find and how cheap it is. It may not be up to the avante gard sensibilities of Treehuggers but I don't see why it couldn't be. Why hasn't this building method received more of the focus?
pfff -- my partner and I designed & built our own house by ourselves for less than $10,000. I don't see the point in this at all, other than it's very pretty.