Loblolly House
via Washington Post
Loblolly House, an environmentally sustainable weekend retreat on the Eastern Shore, was built in six weeks from precision-cut panels embedded with all the necessary pipes, wires and windows.
Designed on a computer in the Philadelphia office of the firm, KieranTimberlake, the house’s 3-D construction specs were e-mailed to a custom builder in New Hampshire, who turned out a flat pack of precision-cut panels embedded with all the necessary pipes, wires and windows. Those panels were shipped to Maryland on the beds of standard 8 1/2 -foot-wide tractor-trailers.
Kieran and Bensonwood Homes, his Walpole, N.H., collaborator, won’t disclose the cost of the Loblolly prototype, but they say their flat-pack panel concept has the potential to put custom-designed prefab homes within the economic reach of the kind of people who subscribe to Dwell.
Part of the savings comes from reduced shipping costs. Kieran argues that it’s more efficient to ship flat panels than modular boxes full of air, especially when all the systems are embedded in the panels at the factory. The downside is that panel assembly may take slightly longer on site than modular houses.
