“There is a lot of innovation happening in the prefab home industry. There are new companies, new designs and new building methods. A company called Manta North is taking it a step further and innovating how prefab homes are ordered by allowing customers to easily purchase a home directly from their website. I think this is a great idea that makes the home buying process simple, quick and easy for potential buyers. In this video I tell you a bit about who they are as a company, look at their models available in North America and price out one of their homes in their online store. Follow along to see what they offer and how much it costs.
“After the 2009 earthquake in Central Italy left 40,000 people homeless, Nico D’Incecco and the team at A-Fold began thinking of how they could help provide quickly deployable shelters. In 2019, they released a house that unfolds in hours and provides anti-seismic security.
The wooden houses are prefabricated, loaded onto trucks for transport, and unfolded on-site in hours (adding the windows, drywall, and interior finishings takes about two weeks).
The first design was the Model A (an A-frame), but the company soon released the Model-T (for “trapezoid”) to gain more space on the second floor. There is no need for a concrete foundation since the homes can be placed on screw piles.
The homes begin around 51 (550 square feet) and can grow depending on how many modules one purchases. The only limitation is the modules need to be placed inline, so the company suggests stopping at the “villa” size of 127 square meters (1367 square feet). The units are prefabbed with a selection of cladding, roofing, and flooring.
The homes can also be folded back up and moved, as easily as they unfold, making it possible to reuse them at a new location. The hinge system construction also provides flexibility in the home during an earthquake, allowing it to “disperse the energy of earth tremors” and weather seismic phenomena.
“With 150 trees sprouting across 5 floors of terraces, balconies, and roof gardens, apartment complex “25 Verde” rises like a giant treehouse, a forest-building ecosystem combining geothermal energy, water reuse, and natural cooling.
The 63-unit building’s design continues the arboreal theme, with wooden shingles and steel supports that look like tree trunks. In addition to cleaning the air around the building, the trees dampen noise pollution, provide shade, and help regulate the building’s temperature.
The 200 trees (150 on the building + 50 in the courtyard) produce upwards of 150,000 liters of oxygen per hour during daylight hours and absorb almost 200,000 liters of carbon dioxide during nighttime hours.
Water is captured on the roof gardens and run down to the ground level forming a large pond that adds ambiance and a cooling factor in summer. The building’s heating and cooling systems make use of geothermal energy, using heat pumps and an old well used by a 1950s Fiat factory at the same location.
Corten steel trees support much of the structure and serve as conduits for rainwater and greywater. Architect Luciano Pia modeled these on the majestic old Platanus trees in Turin. His mixed structure of architecture and plants is a unique work of biotecture that reimagines how we can live in cities. 25 Verde resident Paolo Botto gives us a tour of the building.
When Christian Schallert isn’t cooking, dressing, sleeping or eating, his 24 square meter (258 square feet) apartment looks like an empty cube. To use a piece of furniture, he has to build it.
Located in Barcelona’s hip Born district, the tiny apartment is a remodeled pigeon loft. Designed by architect Barbara Appolloni, Christian says the space was inspired by the space-saving furniture aboard boats, as well as the clean lines of a small Japanese home.
Christian sold his apartment and has reinvested his money and small space design ideas in opening a small hotel in Barcelona: https://www.hotelbrummell.com/“
“From agile neighborhoods for veterans or the unhoused to pocket hoods for Portlanders, the dozens of co-housing villages designed by Mark Lakeman are nationally recognized and in demand.
“All my work, and all the permaculture, comes under an overall unifying heading. That is ReVillaging, you might say,” he explained, “With USA neighborhoods being mostly expressions of development-driven goals, they are more products than villages, featuring the fewest community gathering places of all “1st world” countries.
For over 25 years, Lakeman has been creating urban places where community can grow. He took us for a tour of Portland where he’s helped build Dignity Village – the legal encampment for formerly homeless -, converted old apartments into Kailash Permaculture Village, and designed the back-to-back co-housing villages Cully Grove and Cully Green. He gave us a tour of the two “very intentional, dense, urban retrofit villages.”
Both villages are built with fairly traditional architecture, but it’s the orientation that is novel. All the homes- complete with porches- are facing each other; there are no driveways or roads to ruin the atmosphere, but instead, country lanes that wander through vegetation.
Lakeman believes in rules for creating a successful village, much of which is influenced by Kevin Lynch’s 1960 text “The Image of the City.” “The best villages in the world are characterized by a menu of consistent elements or patterns,” explains Lakeman. “The first would be that when you come to the perimeter of a village that there’d be a celebration of the passage through the boundary, and so gateways are important.” He points out that gateways aren’t like gated communities but meant to be welcoming. Perimeters are also essential: he specifies that, at Cully Green, there is an abundant, fruiting, and self-watering landscape.
Once on the inside, great communities have a network of paths, but they’re not purely functional. “The paths themselves are meant to be like a journey… not just to get you from one place to another. You’re supposed to be enjoying yourself. And you’re constantly arriving at nodes of interest and activity.” All of these nodes of activity lead to a central commons “where everyone knows that they belong.” Cully Green has both a central lawn for community gatherings and barbecues, and also a large permaculture garden and orchards.
“We’ve become kind of lazy like we just consume a house as a product and then we liquidate it as an investment and we don’t root and realize that our continuity in a place would actually give us the wealth of having observed with that place over time. It’s so integral to our identity… to be actually a part of some social ritual with each other.”
“This family’s ultra custom 32′ tiny house on wheels was built by D’Arcy from Acorn Tiny Homes. It has a beautiful chef’s kitchen, a cozy living room, a home office loft, two large loft bedrooms, an atrium shower & bathtub, and a super functional entrance with storage, a washing machine, and more. This house is bright and beautiful, and it’s packed with loads of functionality, storage, and space-saving design ideas!
“I’ve spent a lot of my life in business parks, and the vast majority of them suck. But that’s just the way it has to be, right? That’s what I thought, until I had a meeting in a business park by the airport in the Netherlands.”
“There are a lot of amazing prefab home options currently available but I’ve noticed a lot of people are interested in something more affordable. There are a few options currently available but a lot of them come with a lengthy waitlist and I don’t think there is currently enough available to meet the demand. It was announced just over a week ago that a new company will be expanding their operations to the United States and I think people are going to be excited about what they’ve got to offer. The company is called My Cabin and they’ve got a series of prefab structures that can be bought separate or as a package. In this video I look at the company, their products and pricing. Watch and learn about this new company entering the hot US prefab market and why I think people will be excited.
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