build a prefab modern home

We just bought our first home in May and we’re pretty comfortable with our mortgage payments so of course we are already thinking of our next purchase. We are coming into something that could be considered a down payment someday. We would like to buy a lake plot and put something like this on there. Great windows for us and small enough that we don’t have to entertain too much…

I still want to do this, but it’ll be another 5 to 10 years before I can take it seriously so it’s off the list for now.

Hopefully a Rocio Romero

Did everyone see the awesome LV Home featured on the cover of the new issue of Dwell? Sigh…someday…

So has anyone out there built any prefab homes? Gotten the land prepped and all that? I live on the Big Island and am beginning to explore the possibility of building a prefab home here. The location would be on the Hilo (read rainy) side of the island so it would have to be a home that can withstand lots of rain, mild temperatures year round, and preferably catch the rain water to use in the home. Many homes on the eastern side of Hawaii use catchment as County water is not available and rain is plentiful and free. Altho it would be hard to use that as drinking water.

I guess if you like modern steel homes, you might have seen the EcoContempo.com website. Oooo… some really cute practical houses there. Why aren’t more designs available, maybe from different manufacturers, as well?

It seems like all the other steel home manufacturers’ websites I saw – showed Uggggly home designs. And their websites were ugly and uncool too – I guess it is consistent with their house-design aesthetic.

Most typical homes are so booooring – so impractical, so unenvironmental, so uggggly… WHO WANTS TO STRUGGLE TO PAY THE MORTGAGE ON SOME UGLY THING I DON’T LIKE? If I’m gonna have to commit to struggling with mortgage/housing costs for most of my adult life, shouldn’t that home KICK ASS?? And not in the stupid indulgent American sense of being bigger/badder than the neighbors’ homes, but in the sense of being just the right size, green, lets in tons of light, is low maintenance, is durable, is cute, practical, etc. Geeze man, we’re not asking for some miracle here man. Not like they didn’t put men on the moon and all that jazz like 40 YEARS AGO!!!

I just read that a bunch of Rural Studio students are working on converting shipping containers into temporary housing for Katrina evacuees. Totally cool!

Very cool: http://microcompacthome.com/index.php

I wish there were more photos though!

I’m really fond of Rocio Romero’s LV house. I think it’s really funny that the model is in Perryville, Mo. It’s just the last place I expected having grown up in Mo. I know one has been built somewhere near Richmond and it’s available to be rented out for vacations. I’d like to go spend a few nights in it and see how it feels. Someone was trying to build a 2 story version in CA which kind of sounds like a bad idea. Plus they just felt for whatever reason they needed a larger house the LV-L.

I also like LOT-EK’s container houses and well as Adam Kalkin’s. Oh some day. I guess the first step (aside from stacking cash) is finding a plot.

http://www.rocioromero.com/
http://www.lot-ek.com/
http://www.architectureandhygiene.com/