ARTICLE

Build Your Homes in Factories

Two years ago, while in Ontario visiting with friends and family, I was kindly invited to my cousin's new home for Thanksgiving dinner. Getting there required taking the subway out to Kipling, its westernmost stop and then driving another 40 minutes until we arrived literally on the edge of the GTA sprawl. Only a block away lay acres of razed land, once the fertile soil of farms and orchards, now reallocated to the purposes of souless and sterile suburbia. Is this what we were all striving for? I asked myself. Working our lives away for a carving of these spoils?

Thankfully, it would indeed appear that the days of cookie cutter suburbia could soon be waning.

Today's market is evermore focused on providing the customer with a deeply personalized experience. Ironically, this has become possible through the efficiencies of mass production. Nike's online cutomized running shoes are an example of this. And now, architect Michelle Kaufmann wants to do the same thing to where and how we live.

Glidehouse, the first offering from this Frank Gehry protege, was the main feature at this weekend's Home & Interior Design Show in Vancouver and has become almost iconic to the new prefab movement that has been gaining momentum over the past 5 years most notably due to the launch of Dwell magazine in the States. Kaufman's design is a result of the frustration she experienced when she and her husband set out in search of their first home. The choice between a suburban existence or a $600,000 fix-me-up in the city seemed to miss the mark entirely. Neither met her housing needs. So she designed her own home.

Based on 60's architect Joseph Eichler's call for "modern homes for the masses", Kaufman's Glidehouse uses a modular concept that allows for a different layouts and variations on the same theme using a preselected set of materials. The houses are built in an assembly line fashion in a factory in Penticton and then shipped to the client's site upon completion. This proves to be a far more efficient and environmentally friendly method of construction compared with the traditional on site building plan and a more economical option than the high end custom designed modern home.

There are still some rough roads ahead for the new prefab movement. Most notable is the general association of prefab with trailer parks and the white trash that generally call such places home. But there is little chance of finding one of Kaufman's creations showing up in the background of Trailer Park Boys. Anyone with a keen design eye will immediately understand that. Those who don't get the difference... well, I guess they will continue to buy their cookie cutter homes.

Ultimately, I fear the suburban sprawl of Toronto is a lost case. There is little that will stop the momentum of such a beast. But at least there is some hope in knowing that there are people out there like Kaufman who actually give a damn. Finally there appears to be a third option for homebuyers.

 
 
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