Story by Allison Arieff
With herself as guinea pig, architect Michelle Kaufmann conducted the perfect prefab experiment: Design a house. Build one onsite, one in the factory. Watch what happens.
In the much-maligned, often-overhyped, and frequently misunderstood world of prefabricated construction, one of the most common questions asked is “Why prefab?” And there is perhaps no better answer to that question than architect Michelle Kaufmann’s first two Glidehouses—one prefab, one not.
The process of building the two homes simultaneously gave Kaufmann the perfect laboratory in which to hone her skills and perfect her process. “I’m done with site-built,” she says. “Going through this convinced me of the benefits of modular.”
Like many first-time home buyers, Kaufmann and her husband, Kevin Cullen, were frustrated by what the market had to offer. In the astronomically priced San Francisco Bay Area, where a modest single-family home for $750,000 is considered a “deal,” there were precious few houses in their price range—and those that were were not at all the sort of places they saw themselves living in. After months of Sundays spent trudging through open houses, Kaufmann, who’d recently left Frank Gehry’s architectural office, and Cullen, a builder and woodworker, changed their strategy. In the spring of 2003, they found land in Novato, California (25 miles north of San Francisco), on which to build their own home. “We were excited,” says Kaufmann, “and luckily naïve, not knowing what was ahead. Had we actually known, I think we would have been very afraid.”
Things began to move as rapidly as their search for land. A design had to be submitted within the 45-day escrow period. Cullen, who would act as general contractor, was pushing for as sustainable a house as possible.
“My 83-year-old Uncle Joe instilled a great respect for the outdoors in me and was the first person I ever heard talk about sustainable building,” explains Cullen. “So I’d been hearing about things like passive solar, photovoltaics, water catchment and renewable resources for years.”
“Sustainability is the driving force of what we do,” says Kaufmann of her firm, Michelle Kaufmann Designs (MKD). Accordingly, Kaufmann and Cullen opted for structural insulated panels (SIPs), believing they would offer the best insulation and save time and money in construction. However, the time and money part “ended up not being true,” says Kaufmann. So even as they proceeded with SIPs for their own home, they began to explore other alternatives that would offer the same level of sustainability—and the anticipated savings in time and money they’d hoped for—in future projects.
“During this time friends and colleagues were forced to listen to us talk about our house and its design,” says Kaufmann, whose affable manner no doubt made her tales of building woe intriguing to those in earshot. “Many were in similar situations and asked if I might do something like our house for them.” So in the summer of 2003, Kaufmann divided her time between building her own home and researching factory fabrication options.
Most factories Kaufmann contacted didn’t return her calls—an experience not uncommon among architects hoping to do modern prefab homes. Those factories that did respond did so quizzically, unable to understand why anyone would want such a house and, thus, why the factory would want to build one.
Realizing that for factories to even entertain her requests she’d have to prove the market was there, Kaufmann started working on a small website that described her project. Meanwhile, work continued on Kaufmann and Cullen’s own Glidehouse and it was slow going. Drawings needed revising, bids were coming in higher than original estimates, and because of a Bay Area building and renovating boom, subcontractors were hard to come by. By September, permits had been approved for Glidehouse #1 and Kaufmann’s website for the Glidehouses of the future went live.
By November 2003, site work, clearing, grading, and septic construction began on her house—and, as for the modular Glidehouses, says Kaufmann, “my faith and stalking finally paid off.” A mention on fabprefab.com helped: Factories began to show some interest, and Sunset magazine contacted her to discuss building a Glidehouse for their annual celebration weekend in Menlo Park, California. Just after Thanksgiving, Kaufmann got her first client for a modular Glidehouse (let’s call it #2) in the Lake Chelan area of Washington State: Andrew Reid, a branch manager and loan consultant with Countrywide, the largest home mortgage lender in the United States (which does not treat modular any differently than a traditional stick-built home).
“Both the incredible aesthetics of the Glidehouse and its sustainable construction were huge draws for us,” explains Reid. “Being prefab wasn’t really important, except in that it fit nicely with our time line.”
The trajectories of #1 and #2 began to diverge quite dramatically (see p. 176). Kaufmann was pleased to discover how many things could happen simultaneously with the modular project (i.e., bids could be reviewed while drawings were being approved for permits instead of waiting for that approval). But she and Cullen were both despondent that, by April 2004, the factory-built house was speeding past the SIPs house.
“Seeing Andrew’s completed house,” says Cullen, “was like seeing a dead relative come back to life. I returned to our own house, still in its framing stages, bare copper pipes and electrical wires sticking out from all the walls, wondering what the hell was taking me so long.”
As winter approached, Kaufmann and Cullen had to start paying their construction loan. Unable to afford both mortgage and rent, they moved into their not-quite-finished home. But by the end of 2004, they were settled, and immediately began enjoying their house, not to mention their $0 energy bills, thanks to the solar panels. (“We hooked into Pacific Gas & Electric, so we sell back on sunny days and buy back on gray days,” says Kaufmann.)
Kaufmann’s experience building #1 and #2 not only offered a lifetime’s worth of character building, it was integral in helping her to become one of the few contemporary practitioners to actually make modern prefab work as both a business and a way of building.
“When I told my wife that all homes might be factory-built in the future,” recalls Reid, “she thought I had lost my mind.” The incredible success of Kaufmann’s vision, however, made the Reids converts—and perhaps the rest of us, too.
