Can Green Homes be Mass Produced?

Michelle Kaufmann wants to take green living into mass production. Kaufmann is part of a new generation of architects who are elevating modular homes into icons of good design and environmentalism. Her quest was borne from a frustrating personal experience. Kaufmann previously worked as an associate for architect Frank Gehry. After moving to the Bay Area near San Francisco, she and her husband searched for homes and found little that met their needs. The options were $600,000 tear downs ("which we could almost afford but then couldn't afford to do anything after we tore the house down") or subdivision mini-mansions ("which we just couldn't bring ourselves to do"). So they decided to build for themselves. They bought land in Marin County and designed their own home for simplicity and sustainability. In, 2002, she founded her own firm, Michelle Kaufmann Designs, and took her plans into factory production. Her firm now offers several options: the Glidehouse (based on the home she designed for herself), the mkLoft, the mkLotus, the mkSolaire, the Sunset Breezehouse, and custom home designs. Modules are assembled in a factory, arrive on site 90 percent completed and can be assembled with various configurations and finishing options.

How did your own experience looking for a house push you into this field?

All of the work we're doing now started from me not thinking like an architect but thinking like a client. We couldn't find anything we liked we could afford There's this enormous gap between these thoughtless subdivisions, these McMansions designed by developers, and the beautiful homes designed by architects -- and nothing in between.

Do home buyers want more green options than the market is providing?

Absolutely. People do want to go green. They want lower energy bills and healthy environments for their families. It's a no- brainer, but there are not many solutions out there. Green still seems like it has a price premium and it's only for people who can afford it. It's kind of like organic food movement. Ten or 15 years ago organic foods had a significant price premium. But now, as more and more people are demanding organic foods and places like Costco are carrying it, there's just a minimum increase in price for organic.

For the last few decades, the housing industry has been kind of a bigger-is-better arms race: More bathrooms, more square footage, more garage stalls. Is this changing?

I think we're in the middle of a cultural shift. People are wanting more from less, rather than bigger is better. The iPhone is a good example -- it can't just be a phone. It's a camera, Internet, email, our calendar, the way we check the weather. Another example is Smart Water. Once we start wanting more from water, you know we're in the middle of cultural shift.

Thinking of modular homes as showcases for elegant design seems like a pretty big shift.

In every other industry, we've used technology and automation to bring good design to the masses, but we're still building buildings the same ways we have been for hundreds of years. In the USA, we've had this hesitation about embracing offsite technology because of this misconception of all prefab being substandard, like trailer homes. In places like Japan or Australia, if you're building a high end home, you want it built in a factory with precision cutting and quality control.

Is it really possible for something to be both elegant and mass?

We have a number of different designs because we want every home to feel as though it was just meant for that site. If you only had a couple of designs, that would not work because then it would feel like it has nothing to do with the site. Even within those designs, there are a number of ways that they can be put together, and assembled in different materials. We've completed 26 homes and we'll have 50 done by the end of the year, and no two really look alike even though they seem alike in the factory.

How much more affordable are these modular homes?