The complex, nestled among vineyards in California’s Napa Valley, is in the early stages of design.
In addition to the main residence (which Oakland, Calif. architect Toby Long refers to as the Napa barn style), the project includes a pool house and party barn, Mr. Long suggests. A movie theatre, large conservatory style room, swimming pool, jacuzzi, summer kitchen, large reflecting pool and outdoor patios bring the party home. But despite its uniqueness, the luxury residence is one of a growing number of modern, modular mansions emerging in the United States using prefabricated, prefabricated components.
Ultra-high income people, driven in part by the need for safe isolation during the pandemic, are choosing to build these homes, which can cost millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, because they are built more efficiently, with higher quality, and most importantly, unlike traditional ones. they can be completed much faster than on-site construction methods.
Mr Long, who has been building prefabricated houses under the Clever Homes brand for over two decades, said the genre is “waking up from its American slumber. When you mention prefabricated or modular homes, people think of high volume, low quality. his cheap legacy is a complicated process.”
Steve Glenn, CEO and founder of Plant Prefab in Rialto, California, has built about 150 housing units, including 36 in Palisade, a ski resort in the Lake Tahoe region of Olympic Valley, which sells for $1.80. million to $5.2 million.
“Prefabricated houses are popular in Scandinavia, Japan and parts of Europe, but not in the US,” Mr. Glenn said. “Over the past few years, we have seen a significant increase in orders; some of it is related to Covid because people have the ability to choose where they want to work and live.”
The Plant Prefab building system provides an efficient and predictable way to build high-quality homes during Lake Tahoe’s short building season, when skilled labor shortages are particularly acute on the US West Coast, said Brown Studio executive and owner Lindsey Brown. the based firm designed the Palisades development. Prefab “saves us the hassle of having to compromise on design,” he added.
Although the first recorded mobile home was in 1624 – it was made of wood and shipped from England to Massachusetts – the concept was not adopted on a large scale until World War II, when people needed to quickly build cheap housing. it’s great that until the last year or two, custom home builders have been using it for high-end private estates and luxury residential complexes.
This is not a cheap option. The average price of a custom prefabricated house is between $500 and $600 per square foot, but often much higher. When site planning, transportation, finishing and landscaping are added to this, the total cost of completion can double or even triple.
“These modern modular mansions are unique,” Mr. Long said. “Not many people do that. I build 40 to 50 prefabricated houses a year, and only two or three of them are mansions.”
He added that prefabricated homes could be a practical option at luxury resorts like Telluride, a ski and golf resort in Colorado, where snowy Rocky Mountain winters can disrupt construction schedules.
“It’s hard to build houses here,” Long said. “To build a house on a builder’s schedule can take two to three years, and the construction season is short due to the weather. All these factors force people to explore other construction methods. Your timelines can be shortened and simplified by working with factory partners.”
He added that modular mansions could be built in one-third or one-half of the time it takes traditional building methods. “We can complete the project in a year instead of two or three years like in most cities,” he said.
There are two main types of traditional prefabricated houses on the market available to luxury home builders: modular and panel.
In a modular system, building blocks are built in a factory, transported to site, placed in place by crane, and completed by general contractors and construction crews.
In traditional structural insulated panel systems, panels sandwiched with an insulating foam core are manufactured at the factory, packaged flat, and shipped to the assembly site for assembly.
Most of Mr. Long’s building designs are what he calls “hybrid”: they combine modular and panel elements with traditional on-site construction and, depending on the prefab house manufacturer, a proprietary branding system that incorporates various characteristics of both.
For example, at the Napa Valley Estate, the timber structure system was prefabricated. There are 20 modules in the project – 16 for the main house and 4 for the pool house. The party shed, built from prefabricated timber structures, was constructed from a converted barn that was dismantled and hauled to the site. The main living spaces of the house, including the huge glazed room, are the only parts of the project built on site.
“Projects with high investment and complex construction and fit-out will always have an element of on-site construction,” Mr. Long said, adding that the amenities and features of custom homes are what drive up costs.
Architect Joseph Tanny, a partner at New York firm RESOLUTION: 4 ARCHITECTURE, typically works on 10 to 20 luxury “hybrid” prefabricated projects a year, mostly in New York’s Hamptons, Hudson Valley, and Catsky neighborhoods. designed in accordance with LEED standards.
“We have found that the modular approach provides the most value in terms of time and money compared to the overall quality of the entire project,” said Mr. Tunney, co-author of Modern Modularity: Prefabricated House Solutions: 4 Architectures. “Using the efficiency of traditional timber-framed modules, we were able to build about 80 percent of the house in the factory. The more we build at the factory, the higher the value proposition. ”
Since April 2020, a month after the start of the pandemic, there has been a “surge” in requests for high-end modern homes, he said.
Brian Abramson, CEO and founder of Method Homes, a Seattle-area prefabricated home builder who builds homes ranging from $1.5 million to over $10 million, has said “everyone is moving and wanting to change their lives” in the wake of the pandemic, he says. remote work situation.
He noted that the rational and predictable approach to prefabrication attracted many new customers who had traditionally built their homes. “In addition, many of the markets we operate in have very limited workforce and local contractors for years, so we offer a faster option,” he said.
Method houses are factory built in 16-22 weeks and assembled on site in one to two days. “Then they take anywhere from four months to a year to complete, depending on the size and scope of the project and the availability of local workforce,” Mr. Abramson said.
At the Prefab plant, which uses its own system for assembling factories from specialized panels and modules, business has been so active that the company is building a third plant, a fully automated plant capable of producing up to 800 units per year.
“Our system offers design flexibility and panel mobility with the benefits of modularity in time and cost,” Mr. Glenn said, adding that it is “optimized for custom built homes.”
Founded in 2016, the company specializes in bespoke homes designed by its own studio and third-party architects, with a mission to “make great sustainable architecture more accessible,” according to Glenn. “For this, we need a building solution dedicated to custom, high-quality and sustainable home construction: a factory with technologies and systems that can make the process faster, more reliable, more efficient and reduce waste.”
Dvele, a San Diego-based prefab home builder, is experiencing a similar growth. It launched five years ago, ships to 49 states, and plans to expand to Canada and Mexico, and eventually internationally.
“We produce 200 modules per year and by 2024, when we open our second plant, we will be able to produce 2,000 modules per year,” said Kellan Hanna, director of development at the company. “People who buy our homes have double the income and higher incomes, but we’re moving away from customization.”
Prefabricated houses are not the only non-traditional option used by custom builders and their clients. Custom stud and beam kits, such as those made by Seattle-based Lindal Cedar Homes, are being used to build turnkey homes costing between $2 million and $3 million.
“Our system has had no architectural compromises,” said operations manager Bret Knutson, adding that interest has grown 40% to 50% since the pandemic. “Customers can choose from a very open color palette. As long as they stay in the system, they can design their home in any size and style they want.”
He noted that clients love “the variety of modern and classic home styles and enjoy the flexibility of custom design processes and systems.”
Lindal is North America’s largest manufacturer of post-and-transom houses, primarily serving customers in the US, Canada and Japan. It offers home kits, takes between 12 and 18 months to build, and like traditional buildings, it’s built on site from shipping containers, an advantage for secluded resorts or holiday islands that can’t be reached by car.
Lindal, which has an international dealer network, recently partnered with Los Angeles-based architecture firm Marmol Radziner to build a 3,500-square-foot home and guest house in Hawaii.
“The quality of the materials is absolutely first class,” said Mr. Knudsen. “All-clear spruce beams throughout and clean cedar siding. Even the plywood is custom made from clear cedar and costs about $1,000 apiece.”
[Editor's Note: A previous version of this article misrepresented aspects of the Napa Valley vineyards due to incorrect information provided by Global Domain. This story has been edited to reflect that the project is still in the design phase. ]
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Post time: Dec-26-2022