Ex-Dwell Editor Considers Prefab in Brooklyn and Beyond

Former Dwell Editor in Chief and “Prefab” author Allison Arieff believes prefab housing may finally realize its long-elusive promise of cheaper, better homes thanks to four big projects going up in Brooklyn and elsewhere in the City. The first is, of course, B2, the Atlantic Yards tower designed by SHoP Architects that, at 32 stories, will be the tallest prefab tower in the world when constructed. “In contrast to regular old housing construction, which happens pretty much the same way it has for decades, if not a century, prefab has long been promising better design and innovation and — the key to its intrigue — a more affordable path to good architecture,” she wrote. And: “Prefab is best utilized in the design and construction not of single-family homes but of multifamily housing.” Architect designed homes make up only 5 to 7 percent of houses in the U.S. but “multifamily opens the door for those numbers to increase.” The architect and principal of Resolution: 4, Joseph Tanney, said, “The residential modular industry is salivating at the prospect of building more multifamily projects. It’s a natural extension to think in terms of aggregation of the modules into higher density patterns, both architecturally and economically. I don’t think that they are just now discovering prefab for multifamily. It’s just taking time for it to evolve into a higher level of design.” Do you think the prefab construction at Atlantic Yards will cut construction costs and pass on savings to the public in the form of better design than conventional methods?
Prefab Lives! [NY Times]
Rendering of B2 by SHoP Architects