A new type of prefab

It continues to amaze me that some people still think that the best way to build a home is on site. It’s like asking your car to be built in your driveway. Now that we have the ability to build a home in a controlled factory environment, stick built just doesn’t make sense anymore. The growing variety of prefabricated options and the increasing number of benefits they offer are making prefab an even more appealing choice. A perfect example is the project pictured here, made using a new type of prefabrication meant to achieve the specific shapes conceived by the resident artist.

This recently completed Northern California residence was designed by an amazing furniture designer, Miranda Leonard. Miranda has been creating fabulous furniture designs using fiberglass for decades. So when it came to creating her new home, she designed the forms and spaces herself. She then developed a new type of construction and prefabrication that would allow her to achieve the shapes she had designed.

She worked with architects Sandy Walker and Bryan Fleenor of Walker+Moody, an interesting cast of characters including digitizers, computer modelers, and structural engineers, as well as William Kreysler whom she worked with in the past on some of her fiberglass furniture pieces. I was fortunate to have worked on her project for almost a year before starting MKD. Although the work I did at Frank Gehry’s office helped me to think about possible ways of constructing the forms that Miranda had designed, most of the construction techniques (e.g. laser cut steel ribs) make sense on larger structures like museums or concert halls. They would have been over-structured and not cost-effective for the scale of a her home. So Miranda, Kreysler, and the architectural team came up with a way of constructing the forms that is similar to building a boat.

The shapes (that came from Miranda’s models) were digitized, converted as surfaces into the computer, then translated to CNC (computer numerical control) milling at Kreysler’s shop for formwork for the fiberglass structures. They used insulation made with the denim from old blue jeans. They used stucco on the outsides and plaster on the inside of the structures. Finally, the forms were trucked to the site and set into place with cranes.

In the process of creating Miranda’s home, a new and very interesting type of prefabrication was born with an amazingly beautiful outcome. I was filled with delight as I floated through the exterior and interior spaces, not only absorbing the beauty of it all but also admiring the terrific innovation.

Miranda Leonard in her stair/entry form

The guest house made of prefabricated fiberglass construction

Looking up at a canopy

View of the studio with a green roof

Bryan Fleenor (project architect) and myself

William Kreysler and group

From left to right: Liz Ranieri (amazing architect), Catherine Wagner (one of my very favorite artists), and Loretta Gargan (lovely landscape designer)

My dear friend Kathryn Leighton watches the sunset on the roof deck

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Current Projects, Prefab Construction, blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.