For nearly a century, architectural visionaries have been predicting that some day, people everywhere would live happily in prefabricated homes. It hasn’t happened yet, but they’re on to something.
“We shall arrive at the House-Machine, the mass-production house, healthy (and morally so too) and beautiful…” —Le... 
1624 – The first known prefab, a panelized wood house, is shipped from England to Massachusetts as housing for a fishing fleet.
1849 – Kit houses are shipped by rail to accommodate settlements during the California Gold Rush.
1908 – Sears begins a mail-order Modern Homes program,... 
Some prefabs are well designed, but many aren't, especially when it comes to eco-friendliness. And the worst offenders—the houses shoddily built from cheap (and toxic) materials, that offer poor insulation and give prefabs such a bad rap—are particularly problematic. Indeed, a prefab’s impact on the environment is only as... 
Almost half a century ago, a 24-year-old rocked the design world. The architect’s vision for modular housing—his master’s thesis, actually—was selected for construction as part of the World’s Fair in 1967. Known as Habitat 67, Moshe Safdie’s prefabricated housing complex was made of interlocking concrete modules with... 
So you want to get a prefab
1. Find a site and establish construction feasibility—before buying it, obviously. Prefab companies will gladly advise you at this early stage at no cost.
2. Buy your land.
3. Pick a home you like. You should also start thinking about... 
Inside a Modular Prefab
Designer: Marmol Radziner
Model: Palms House
Size: 2,800 square feet
Cost: $1.2 million, before landscaping and land
A recent visit to one of Marmol Radziner’s construction sites in Venice, California, reveals a 2,800 square-foot... 
