ArchWeek - Container House

[Kevin Matthews]

This forum thread is for discussion of the ArchitectureWeek article:

[pbacot]

Impressed that this house can be built for less than $150 /sf. In our part of california that IS a great deal. However I doubt the figures.

The advantage of these boxes is where structural value for the rest of the building can be derived from their use. The space (width) inside is at the minimum usable for custom home building.

All the specialized work to cut, weld, move, insulate, finish, and join these boxes to the rest of the structure seems bound, in fact, to increase the time and cost over conventional construction.

On the other hand Prefab elements of this house should lower costs and labor.

A movement I see locally is that, for smaller structures, public agencies are looking at pre-fab to circumvent "prevailing wage" requirements. In general if you can have it built where the costs of labor, environmental standards, and materials are cheap, you can save thousands by importing your house, just like the household appliances and almost everything that goes inside. It's a questionable savings in the end.

Give these units to Manufactured Home builders. They can make all improvements to be delivered ready to use or assembled at the site, bypassing all local codes for federal standards. Since the units are portable, Why not fit them out in a factory where efficiencies can be optimized?