We've been following A Prefab Project's construction of a Resolution: 4 Architecture home since near the beginning.

Over a year later, the home is complete and available to rent. It's an excellent opportunity to understand what a Resolution: 4 Architecture home can be. Homeowners Chris and Sarah have definitely put a lot of energy and care into the home, and it shows.

A few guests have been testing the place out over the past couple months. Chris shared some stories:

... all of the folks who have stayed so far have been superstars. John and Laura, our first guests, talked with me for an hour on the phone about their visit, and took copious notes. (And have already booked two more weekends!) Chris and Ritamary chipped in one of those wire brush scrubbers for the grill. Ross and Libby sent along a professional-quality blurb and a fancy corkscrew. And Jake, whose Herculean bicycle trip from Pittsburgh to our cabin really cannot be appreciated unless you are a biker.

Jake documented his bicycle trip to the cabin with a blog and great photos.

Our previous coverage of the project:

• the home was delivered and set about a year ago
• lessons learned in July of last year
• a budget update in August

I'm a little obsessed with the progress updates over at MoMa's Home Delivery blog. Not least: several of the videos are great -- but some of their best are hidden behind a proprietary interface.

Try this. In the top right corner of their blog, move your mouse over the image. With luck, a control bar will slide up a bit from the bottom. Click the tiny square icon on the right and notice that the hard-to-read gray text on a light gray background changes. In theory, that means you switched to another video. In practice, it's hard to tell since there's not much action in some of them.

The time-lapse installation videos are definitely worth a look -- though it would be much better if each video was in a separate post that bloggers could link to.

I've received an update on a few EcoSteel projects. There's been significant progress with the house and observatory (pictured above), designed by Gregory La Vardera, that we first covered them about a year ago.

The large project consists of a 7,000+ sf custom home, a "toy garage" and a private observatory. Definitely not your average home! Because of the project's remote location in Rodeo, New Mexico, not many contractors were available. So, homeowner Steve Cullen chose prefab. Some of the advantages:

• faster build
• ease of delivery and installation
• design flexibility
• strength and quality control
• eco-efficiency

A number of images of the home's progress, as well as some cool night shots of the observatory are available on Picasa.

Another project, Goshawk Ranch, has its own blog. Under construction since September, the home looks to be moving along. The blog's most recent post shows the newly installed wall panels and front door.

EcoSteel's prefab system consists of a home's steel frame, both interior and exterior, along with exterior wall and roof panels. The remainder of the design and materials are left to the homeowner and local contractors. We discussed the system in detail last year.

This skeleton-and-skin sort of offering is not uncommon. A number of other prefab companies sell similar systems, with a range of additional design help. Rocio Romero's LV Series homes come without finishes, but with a list of recommendations on finishes and vendors. And Sander Architects design the entire home, but only prefabricate the steel framing.

Alchemy Architects has had a blog for a while, but just recently, Alchemy's Betsy Gabler has been updating frequently with information on the weeHouse.

One post covered a not-so-weeHouse in PA:

Owners of the Johnson Creek weeHouse have graciously provided some great new pictures of their 4 box weeHouse in Pennsylvania.

The Alchemy Architects website provides a description of the home (seen above) and additional images:

This 2,200SF 3BR retreat home consists of a larger main unit accommodating most daily activities and a smaller sleeping tower. Both units are connected by an elevated patio bridge component.

A post from last week profiled a weeHouse in upstate New York:

• process started with Alchemy in October 2007; site work (client started from scratch which means even putting in their own septic and well systems) and preliminary design happened throughout the winter of 2007-2008
• house is due to be 'set' in Fall 2008
• floor plan follows the weeHouse side x side PAIR that has two bedrooms and one bath; client added screen porch (great idea!) using Alchemy's additional design services and also worked with their general contractor to customize a walk-in basement...
• total square footage (including exterior deck and porch) = 1250
• (06/08): price for weeHouse PAIR in NY is listed at $189K; this house with additional design options/fees is still coming in at under $200K (about $160/SF); additional costs include site work, basement, transportation, and set/hook-up fees (many of these are priced differently by region)

We're still waiting for the Build a wee page to become active. Hopefully we'll see that announced on the blog soon!

Also: there's a weeHouse page, updated frequently, on Facebook. You have to be a friend to see the profile, but you can find it through a search.

Modular builder Empyrean International has launched a new website. We've previously covered their Acorn and Deck Houses and discussed their Dwell NextHouse at length.

The new site features much improved navigation and more detailed information:

• a brief review of building systems
• an explanation of their collaborative process
• a rundown of current projects
• a schedule of upcoming events
• a map of Empyrean homes around the world

Speaking of Empyrean, the Silicon Valley NextHouse was open to visitors last week. Interior designer Sally Kuchar was there and shared stories and photos on her sallyTV blog.

Marmol Radziner have a launched a blog:

We hope to post regularly on a range of topics, including the various projects that we currently have in design and production, events around the country, or just interesting articles and ideas that influence what we do.

In the coming months, we’ll be blogging a lot about the Venice House (a.k.a. California House 6). This house is currently in our factory and will be delivered to a small, urban lot this spring. We designed [the] house to respond to the narrow, infill site by having the home look inwards towards small, private courtyard spaces. This allowed us to maintain an open, bright feeling that connects indoor and outdoor spaces despite the small lot.

A recent post discussed putting a concrete floor in a prefab house:

We loved how the concrete floors in the Desert House looked, but we shied away from using them in our first few projects that we produced in our own factory. The Desert House’s concrete were so beautiful, but also so heavy, which made the installation quite challenging...

We'll keep track of any big updates over at the new blog, but be sure to check it out for yourselves.

Santa Monica-based Minarc has a (minimal) new website for their M3house.

We first encountered Minarc last April. Treehugger covered them again in July:

We admired the Minarc house by Tryggvi Thorsteinsson and Erla Dögg Ingjaldsdóttir when it was in Dwell; now we learn that they are offering it in a prefab version. The designers...have wanted to design a high-tech modern home that only used materials "in their most organic form and that used recycled materials wherever possible."...They are offering three modular versions built from 2x6 walls, lots of insulation and radiant flooring.

land+living shared several images of a non-prefab prototype from a tour last year. The Minarc brochure (pdf) released at the time explained their eBOX series 05. It looks like the M3house will be quite different.

We look forward to more details on the new home. The image above is the only thing on the new site; what a tease!

model: M3house and eBOX series 05

designer: Minarc

We covered many informative websites on prefab and modular homes last year. A few of our favorite posts:

• In May, we found the LV Series Yahoo! Group, a great resource on Rocio Romero's LV Series homes

• We wrote about Nashville Modern Prefab in June. The plan: to build a Hive Modular home. Sadly, it looks like work has stalled.

• Shedworking entered our radar at the end of June. The blog is a great source of information on small prefab homes.

• We love A Prefab Project, which tracks the progress of a Resolution: 4 Architecture home in West Virginia. In July, we watched the home being delivered.

• Also in July: Hive Modular started a blog.

• Sears Homes were some of the earliest prefabs. We were excited when we found a great resource on the homes: the Sears Archives.

• I'd forgotten about this one: we covered a great Flickr set of a Flatpack House going up. Now the home is much more complete.

• In December, we came across ModularHomeChoice.com. It offers some useful information about building a modular home.

• And we saw Secret Fortress Hideout, a blog all about the construction of an LVL Home.

Greg LaVardera brings us Letters from Sweden - land of modern, land of prefab:

In my previous entry I introduced Scott, my correspondent from Sweden. An American builder relocated to a suburb of Stockholm, he landed in an alternate reality where modern housing was everywhere, commonplace, even dare I say unremarkable. None of the stigmas or resistance we have come to associate with building a modern house were present. Every builder offered solid modern design in the range of homes they sold, and were more than happy to sell you one. On top of this prefabrication techniques were the norm. Sizable portions of the houses Scott saw being built were put together in the factory...

What did Scott find?

"...the majority of new construction is built like this. I would call the house panelized - but it is "way way panelized" and is a total package. The houses come on trucks from rural places in Sweden. The windows are in, the insulation, wiring, wallboard where possible - every thing - the pipes, the wiring systems, the doors, stairs ... everything has been engineered and rationalized to reduce labor, find energy and material economy and work with the method of construction where stuff is pre-assembled as much as possible inside a building and then "erected" or installed on the site under very compressed schedules...."

Read the full post for Greg's comparison to prefab on this side of the pond.

We recently added Modular Today to our sidebar. The site is useful for anyone looking to build a modular home, with information ranging from an expected timeline to a financing guide.

I wandered over to the XtremeHomes site the other day and found that they are now writing a blog:

A brief collection of thoughts on the growth of the green building industry. What's real, what's not and what people are expecting.

Definitely worth keeping an eye on.

company: XtremeHomes

Howstuffworks features a comprehensive article on prefab homes:

But what exactly is a prefab house? How are the pieces constructed and assembled? How much money does it take to get a house on a plot of land? And what kind of instructional manual comes with the ultimate model kit?

In this article, we'll find out what prefabricated houses are all about.

The article is chock-full of information, with subsections including:
• Introduction to How Prefab Houses Work
• History of Prefab Houses
• Modern Prefab Houses
• Types of Prefab Houses
• Prefab Housing Cost
• Prefab House Construction
• Prefab Around the Globe
• Lots More Information

From the mailbox:

We like to think of weeHouses as being Good+Cheap+Fast, and, along those lines, we hope you'll find our new Web site Good+Helpful+Fast. After several months of painstaking discussion and analysis, followed by several more of crying, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, we feel like we've come up with a site that successfully conveys massive amounts of information, while showcasing our office's playful, creative nature. We really hope you like it! 
Visit us at www.weehouse.com to check out our new line of standard weeHouses, complete with plans, pricing, and superFancy interactive graphics, or to browse our top-notch custom architectural projects. There's lots of great new stuff to see, do, and learn.

The new site features 360 degree views of all of their prefab models and detailed pricing, based on the region of the country you live in. Coming soon: the ability to build and price your custom weeHouse.

Jetson Green is a fan:

I love it because you can see houses they've built, projects in planning....If you're looking to get a home, you want to go with a company that's actually built something.

Resolution: 4 Architecture's modernist prefab appears on video:

On this edition of Floorplan, OpenHouse NYC host George Oliphant talks to a homeowner, a homebuilder and a home seller to get the definitive breakdown on how a modular home is built, designed, sold and used.

The video also includes a tour of a more traditional modular home.

(Hat tip: banks.com)

For any of you Sears Home enthusiasts:

If you think houses built from kits are shoddy, cheap and obvious, think again. Between 1908 and 1940, Sears sold about 70,000 homes in all 48 states through their mail-order Modern Homes program, with 370 designs that you might not readily recognize as a kit home. Sears kit homes were shipped via boxcar and came with a 75-page instruction book. Each kit contained 10,000 - 30,000 pieces and the framing members were marked to facilitate construction. Many decades later, those same markings can help identify a home as a Sears kit home. So if you're wondering if that adorable little bungalow with the big eaves (or even your own house) is a kit home, read on for signs that will help you identify if it is indeed a historically significant Sears kit home.

Read the full how-to at wikiHow.

While visiting the LV Home Fans Yahoo! group the other day, I happened upon a site I hadn't seen before, Secret Fortress Hideout:

This blog documents the progress of our super-cool, pre-fab home "somewhere" in the wilds of Northwest Arkansas. Rocio Romero designed the home, model LVL, and incorporated our custom modifications.

Recent posts have covered insulation, lighting design, and construction delays:

A few critical path items jumped the track and will push us back about a week.

1. The stainless kitchen cabinets we ordered from Lasertron will be delayed due to an email mixup.

2. The heat won't be connected for two weeks, which delays the floor installation.

3. We found out cultured marble won't work for the tub or bathroom sinks and devised a Plan B (Neptune Zen Soaker Tub and custom-fabricated under-mount stainless trough sinks).

4. And, last, but not least, the company Don scheduled to prime the drywall bumped us a week.

I guess these things happen in building. It's just wild that they all happened in the last two days.

Like A Prefab Project, Secret Fortress Hideout provides a great first-hand look at the construction of a prefab home.

I came across ModularHomeChoice.com while perusing some news the other day:

This website is for those interested in purchasing a modular home or those considering one and wishing to learn more about them.  I will share my experiences and lessons learned while acting as the general contractor on my modular home in the St. Louis, Missouri area.

When researching modular homes, I found a lot of information supplied by builders or sales agents of modular homes.  I am trying to add another perspective to that - that of someone purchasing a modular home as well as being heavily involved in the planning and scheduling of the project.

Sections of the site include:
• background information
• a list of modular builders by state
• financing
• lessons learned
• pictures of all stages of the process

The site is barebones, but informative.

TV meets the Web. Bob Vila's website includes a library of short video clips from the show's Modern Modular series.

Also worth a mention: Bob Vila has his own blog, On The Level. Check it out!

Bob Vila's Home Again on the DIY Network just finished a run of shows about a modular home under construction. I haven't seen the show, but it sounds like there were some good views into the factory and site process.

From the episode descriptions: Modern Modular:

"Bob Vila travels to western Massachusetts for a brand new project; the construction of a modular home in the Berkshire Hills. He goes to the Simplex Industries factory in Scranton, Pa., to see how the process starts. We talk with owner Pat Fricchione, Jr. about the history of the company, and how the image of modular construction has changed over the years."

"Today, we learn about the manufacturing process for the precast panels for the walls. Next, we travel back to the Simplex plant in Scranton Pa., where Bob Vila explains how each module is framed. Back in the Berkshires, the assembly process is explained once the panels have been lowered into place by crane."

"At the Simplex plant, several crews work as if on an assembly line to make fast work of each module. There's a lot happening, from spackle and sand, to insulation, wall and roof sheathing, house wrap, and interior trim. Bob Vila learns about the state-of-the-art wire boxes that are being installed, and we'll look at the staircase that's being built for the front hall from the stair shop."

Simplex is also the manufacturer of the Resolution: 4 Architecture models, like the home featured on the A Prefab Project blog.

A small picture of the home coming together can be seen on the Bob Vila web site.

The WIRED LivingHome we've covered before was first announced back in June. Two months later, the house modules are being installed and you can watch via webcam.

One gripe: I wish the webcam shots were all from a wider angle to show the big picture.

Treehugger's been watching:

"...sometimes watching paint dry is more exciting but then some big module flies in front of the camera."

Jetson Green also tuned in:

"All the main parts are supposed to be complete by September 7, and we'll be able to get a pretty good picture of what the final home will look like."

Curbed LA mentioned the home last Tuesday.

Equity Green discussed Hybrid Seattle, a prefab company building homes from shipping containers. They also showed off the ATC cabin, a prefab concept from Canada.

A blog simply called "House" covered the Empyrean NextHouse blog, we've talked about before.

Preston at Jetson Green showed off the Ideabox Prefab:

"Ideabox offers a pretty cool product in the modern, prefabricated housing industry. Ideabox emphasizes good design, not square footage, and they make it easy to do."

The author at ColumbusING tried to spark debate about prefab:

"Can it be a viable solution? Over the past 10 years the country and for that matter Columbus has been inundated with the "cookie cutter" type of residential building, which has paved the way for convenient and affordable living for some and in the mind of others, has created a perception of architectural character digust. So where does that put Prefab houses?"

A New Zealand blog, Sneak, discovered the WIRED Living Home.

PrairieMod mentioned the blog at A Prefab Project:

"It's an interesting mix of photos, thoughts and information that anyone who dreams of going prefab will find very enlightening."

The Good Human's Prefab Wednesday wrote about the PLACE Houses, a new prefab concept. We'll cover those in more depth soon.

Inhabitat's Prefab Friday examined a student housing project made from containers.

Inhabitat's Prefab Friday covers the Zigloo Domestique, a container-based project in British Columbia:

"It won't solve the housing problem here in the City but when West Coast Green occurs next month attendees will get a chance to tour a 'zero energy' Green home right smack in the Civic Center across from City Hall. Yes, it's a prefabricated house but not that nasty 'Prefab' often associated with temporary replacement for housing during and after WWII."

Green Options posted on the eco-friendliness of modular and prefab construction:

"Prefabrication and Modularity are new eco buzzwords on the menu this year. From homes to furniture, designers are beginning to employ new methods of construction and transportation to cut waste and energy consumption, ensure safety, and achieve greater overall methods of sustainability."

Check out these cool photos of a Flatpak House being built.

(I'm assuming it's a Lazor Office FlatPak though I've not been able to verify.)