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The world of prefab and modular homes. |
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| canuhome.com |
Coming soon to green living shows in Yorkdale, Canada (June 5-15) and Toronto (September 25-26), the Canühome is an example of cutting-edge eco-friendly home design. The Canühome website explains:
The 850 sq.ft. exhibition contains a kitchen, living room, dining room, bathroom and bedroom.
The exhibit includes interpretive panels which highlight the features of the design for the public...
Why is this exhibition so helpful? Ecolectic sums it up:
Made largely of FSC certified plywood and other wood materials, the modular home is assembled with the aid of steel brackets. Being modular you can hook up as many or as few units as you like should your need for space grow or diminish. The engineering behind the design is quite ingenious. Its shape allows for convective and radiant heating, and they proudly announce that "air is a building material"!
And Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper goes into further detail:
...canühome's most intriguing feature is its passive solar "double envelope." Air passing between the two exterior walls on the south side is heated via the dark metal panels of the outermost skin. This heated air travels up and is vented out of the top in summer but, in winter, continues around the other side and into the radiant floor, which keeps the house about 10 degrees [50F]....
Canühome's "breakthrough" was the invention of a new fastener called a "Porcupine." These attach to the wooden structural ribs, extend outward to create the air gap and terminate where the outermost metal panels clip on. Not only is this method much cheaper, it's flexible.
Treehugger likes the idea:
...the designers have used the latest CNC technology and a lot of other ideas that make it one of the more interesting test beds we have seen.
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| royalhomes.com |
Royal Homes is a major manufacturer of modular homes in Canada. Back in 2005, the company commissioned Kohn Shnier Architects to design the Royal Q modular:
...six hundred and twenty square feet of efficient, modern design with two bedrooms, tons of storage, all of the necessities and a few of the niceties of life...We will deliver and install in most of Ontario and Michigan, as long as there is a road big enough for our trucks and crane....
Royal Homes completed construction on the larger Royal Q Muskoka (pictured above) in July of last year. From Treehugger:
The building is essentially a sixteen foot deep wall; ... the maximum width that can go down the road, and Martin Kohn took advantage of this to create the thin, long structure....The terrain is rock, and quite steep. It was disturbed as little as possible, and tree removal was minimized. Because of the difference in grade, Kohn placed the living areas upstairs and the bedrooms below; this way one can change after swimming and then go upstairs to the living areas. One enters by crossing a long bridge from the parking area to the house.
The Edmonton Sun reports:
In an effort to combat Edmonton's housing problem, a housing corporation is proposing that metal shipping containers - like you might see on trains or ships - be converted into low-cost living units.
The full article includes further details. Look for a mention of the Zigloo Domestique.
