Pre-Fab In Palisades Re-writes the Rules of Mobile Homes
Slapp! Knockkk! Drrrrill! Kaslaamm! For complete accuracy, repeat eight hours per day, five days per week for the next 18 to 36 months. Pacific Palisades residents cursed with next-door construction accustom themselves on a daily basis to the familiar rhythm of belching tractors, buzzing saws and throbbing power drills. But the newest house on Temecula Street could give homeowners a reason to rethink what they know–and fear–about new-home construction. More importantly, though, it could also give them reason to consider a reinvented, if still overlooked, building alternative. Within a matter of hours on March 22, an empty parcel on the quiet, residential street off El Medio Avenue became home to a nearly completed two-story 3,600-square-foot house, sparing its neighbors potentially years of construction din. Now and forever invisible to the house’s visitors and neighbors is its bone structure: six pre-fabricated pieces that are the house. The three-bedroom, modern house was birthed almost entirely in a Chino, California factory, where it left for the Palisades replete with windows, doors, roofing and drywall atop several trailer beds. But the house’s true mother is Venice-based architect Jennifer Siegal, 40, who began re-imagining the possibilities of pre-fabricated trailers more than a decade ago. Now, perhaps more than any other designer nationwide, she is credited with re-enlivening the moribund pre-fabricated mobile into an increasingly hip, popular symbol of eco-consciousness and modernism. ‘Pre-fabricated’ has become ‘pre-fab,’ and the distinct connotation is everything. In the mid-1990s when Siegal was teaching design and architecture at Burbank’s Woodbury University, she received a grant from Southern California Edison to help the company rethink portable classrooms, with a focus on improving their energy efficiency. ‘I discovered the problem was not in the way they were structured,’ Siegal says. ‘The problem was really in the materials that were being used and in the way they were designed.’ Siegal admired the trailers’ strong steel frames, which provide more structural soundness than the wooden frames typically used for houses. And she appreciated in-factory production over at-site construction, where 30 percent of building materials go wasted, stolen or lost. But she scrapped the trailers’ heavy plastics, toxic glues, off-gassing paints and small windows. And in their place she has built what she calls more sustainable buildings that are also more livable. She uses coconut-palm and bamboo floors, recycled wheat-fiber walls and organic paints. Influenced by mid-century modernists and her own predilection for green, she pursues high ceilings, open spaces and a blurred distinction between nature and architecture. Whenever possible, she uses tankless water heaters, solar cells, radiant-heated floors and sometimes recycled steel. Not surprisingly, her work has gotten attention. In 2003, she was invited to teach at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design as a Loeb Fellow. The same year ‘Esquire’ magazine named her its ‘Best and Brightest.’ And in 2006, ‘Fast Company’ featured her firm, Office of Mobile Design, for its pioneering approach to architecture. Her prominence has won her several large-scale projects. Among them include the first pre-fab school nearing completion in North Hollywood and an office building at the Brewery downtown. But she also speaks passionately about designing homes, no less her recent Palisades house. ‘I wanted to create a strong relationship back into the garden there,’ she says of the Temecula pre-fab. ‘The whole wall has sliding glass doors. So you can really control temperature without using air conditioning. And you can have this seamless relationship while you’re cooking and your kid is playing outside.’ No walls separate the house’s kitchen from its living and dining rooms, part of Siegal’s vision for open, unencumbered spaces. With a focus on privacy, the house faces inward around its courtyard like an ‘L’ away from the street. ‘I am always trying to capture views as much as possible,’ she says. ‘There are incredible panoramic views of the mountains from the second floor. And the master bedroom has its own terrace and viewing space.’ Beyond sustainability and ‘limitless’ design potential, Siegal says there are practical reasons to buy a pre-fab home. ‘I understand construction from both worlds,’ she says. ‘I know the agonies of having a contractor giving you a cost and then the next day prices have gone up. So many people have these horror stories from construction. ‘In the pre-fab world, the price that my client gets from the factory is locked in. There are no change orders. No surprises. Most people like that,’ she says. Fewer surprises also means the costs of designing, building and transporting a pre-fab is 15 percent less expensive than standard home construction, according to Siegal, who charges between $230 to $280 per square foot. Siegal, who currently has 12 pre-fab homes under way in L.A., says that the time between placing an order for a house and moving in is half the time of normal construction. The house’s owners, who requested privacy, are expected to inhabit their new home within four weeks.
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