Table of contents for 12/1/2016 in Dwell

The allure of prefab is really about control. Control over timeline, control over budget, control over the site. But how many projects are built without at least one maddening, last-second complication? Judging from those glimpsed in this issue, not many. Long before the foundation was poured for Anthrazit House in Santa Barbara, Architects Magnus and EcoSteel explored how to protect the structure from wildfires like the one that destroyed the previous home on the property. The result combines concrete and glass with a fire-resistant prefabricated steel superstructure, an exterior skin of insulated metal panels, and a steel roof. Since most homes in the area are framed in wood, the architects spent additional time locating a steel erection team capable of assembling the structure. Installing the steel-and-glass stair alone required a…

At the height of their U.S. popularity after World War II, the luminaries of Danish design—Risom, Wegner, Jacobsen, and others—were as famous as movie stars. Less well known were the industrialists who discovered ways to distribute their work overseas. Even so, the extent to which history has forgotten C.W.F. France, the British entrepreneur whose manufacturing company once produced 60 percent of all Danish furniture exports, is hard to explain. More than just a businessman, France was a confrere of some of the country’s top midcentury designers. It was he who persuaded Finn Juhl to embrace flat-pack furniture, a novel idea that opened up a vast international audience to the duo. The scion of a Yorkshire textile family, France moved to Denmark in 1936 to help an ailing friend run his…

MAKE DESIGN A DAILY HABIT Dwell does not represent a style, we champion a design for our time. We know that good design makes homes better and lives easier. On our new platform you decide what is good and what you want to explore. It’s a place where you can share, inspire, collaborate, discover, inquire, or simply appreciate with people who share your passion for design and its endless possibilities. Join us. dwell.com Photo by Michael Friberg. WESTERN WINDOW SYSTEMS Walls that disappear? It’s true. Western Window Systems’ multi-slide doors feature large, unobstructed rolling glass panels that stack or slide into pockets for extra wide openings that eliminate the barrier between indoors and out. These moving walls of glass expand living space, frame beautiful views, and let in fresh air…

The people and projects we’re working with really understand that we’re trying to take advantage of the climate, maximize the space, and introduce new products with a keen eye for simple signatures and visually minimal features. Longtime architectural partners Dwell and Turkel Design are launching a new project in a mecca for midcentury modernism—Palm Springs. The Dwell Prefab Palm Springs by Turkel Design both encapsulates the architecture of the region and provides a fresh take on its iconic attributes. The 2000-square-foot prefab is a courtyard home that opens to views of the sprawling San Jacinto mountain range while enjoying its own private poolside oasis. Indebted to the balmy climate, the open plan enables a fluid interplay between indoors and outdoors. For architect Joel Turkel, the city has special meaning: “There’s…

Cover Office of Mobile Design designmobile.com Mimi Shin Design & Interiors mimishin.com Canopy Concepts, Inc. canopyconceptsinc.com Silver Creek Industries silver-creek.net Topia Construction, site contractor 562-307-7021 Acumen Engineering, Inc., modular engineer 801-571-9877 Koje Shoraka, site engineer 310-474-1795 Solid white oak stair treads by caseandgrain caseandgrain.com 29 Some Assembly Required France chair by Finn Juhl from Onecollection onecollection.com 32 It Takes a Village Grow Community growbainbridge.com Davis Studio Architecture and Design davisstudioad.com One Planet Living oneplanetliving.com Evergreen Certified evergreencertified.com PHC Construction phc-construction.com Prefab construction by Kingston Lumber kingstonlumber.com Tim Goss Landscape Architect timgossla.com HomeGrown Organics hg-organics.com Kia Micaud Landscape Architecture kiamicaud.com Quantum Consulting Engineers quantumce.com Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance neea.org A + R Solar a-rsolar.com Photovoltaic panels from Itek Energy itekenergy.com Blue Frog Solar bluefrogsolar.com Building materials from Greenhome Solutions ghsproducts.com Corrugated…

PROJECT The Village, Grow Community ARCHITECT Davis Studio Architecture + Design LOCATION Bainbridge Island, Washington Who said making a better world would be easy? Just ask the cast of characters involved in Grow Community, a development on Washington’s Bainbridge Island that was designed with the ambitious goal of encouraging social interaction while achieving net-zero energy status. Building for the future, they’ve learned, is a constant work in progress. A three-stage project on the former site of Navy housing, Grow was initially conceived by a small group as a way to responsibly increase density while utilizing prefab construction. In the years since its inception, Grow has weathered a number of controversies, including a revolving door of architects, construction delays, and a scaling back of its prefab plan—all on an island known…

PROJECT Shafer Residence ARCHITECT Ma Modular LOCATION Marfa, Texas The beauty of Far West Texas lies not in its lushness, but in its isolation. More than 400 miles west of San Antonio, the small, handsome town of Marfa sits in the rocky Chihuahuan Desert, backlit by two mountain ranges and a panorama of ocotillo-speckled shrub land. It’s exactly the view Don and Linda Shafer wanted. “We just had that need to live in the high desert,” says Don. Before moving permanently to Texas in the late 1980s, the couple had spent years back and forth between Santa Fe and Austin, with five grandchildren spread across the two cities. Nearing retirement, they started spending time in the Big Bend region and became smitten with the landscape, but after trying their hand…

Rene Chun The work of Manhattan-based writer Rene Chun has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, New York, and Wired, where he is a regular contributor, as well as in the anthology series The Best American. He was greeted by a pleasant surprise when he visited a customized Breezehouse prefab in the lower Hudson Valley for this issue (page 90). “As soon as I entered the house, my allergies vanished,” he reports. “The residents explained that the air filtration system, combined with tight construction, kept the pollen outside.” What do you think explains prefab’s enduring appeal? “Le Corbusier nailed it when he said a house was ‘a machine for living.’ With its emphasis on technology, economy, and efficiency, prefab is the epitome of this philosophy.” Floto +…

THE MODERN FAN CO. The Modern Fan Co. is the original and premier source for contemporary ceiling fan design, producing the most complete, exclusively modern collection of ceiling fans available. Our products celebrate the modern idiom through mechanical simplification, geometric forms and contemporary finishes, and are intended to meet the needs of the professional specifier and the design-minded homeowner alike. modernfan.com GOODWEAVE GoodWeave® is ending child labor and trafficking in carpet weaving communities around the world. The nonprofit organization fulfills its mission by monitoring supply chains, rescuing and educating “carpet kids”, providing critical services for artisan families, and harnessing the power of the market. goodweave.org ANDERSEN WINDOWS & DOORS Andersen VeriLock security sensors offer the smartest technology for smart homes. The only home security sensors built directly into windows and…

Designer Jennifer Siegal pushes the boundaries of modular housing at her Venice abode “There’s no doubt that in the next five years, we’re going to see a huge shift in how construction is done. With prefab, there’s less material waste, faster turnaround time . . . it’s just a smarter, faster, stronger system.” —Jennifer Siegal, designer and resident  Project Siegal Residence Designer Office of Mobile Design Location Venice, California  Jennifer Siegal feels more than a touch of excitement when she sees a flatbed carrying housing modules. It’s not simply the idea that a home can be built in a factory, delivered to a site, and hoisted into place in hours, but the larger implications of how mobile architecture responds to the way we live today. For Siegal, prefab is “a…

Prefab is a blessing for hard-to-reach places, like wind-swept tundras, desert islands, and even gardens in the heart of London. When architect Nicholas Howett first clapped eyes on the 10-foot-wide patch behind a Kennington Victorian where he’d been asked to design a studio, he knew that building onsite was out of the question. “There was little room to cut or construct components,” he says. Instead, the structure was fabricated at a joiner’s workshop and ferried to the house in small pieces that could be maneuvered through the front door, brought down a staircase to the garden, and reassembled. The partially handcrafted 86-square-foot haven scans as an old-world counterpoint to modern factory-made prefabs. For Howett’s client, a retiree, it’s a fittingly bespoke place to fine-tune her hobby, rag rug making.…