To date, sustainable residential design has been a luxury reserved for the wealthy. Yet it is individuals at low and moderately-low income levels who can truly benefit from the reduced energy, water and maintenance costs associated with environmentally responsive homes. The ecoMOD project is committed to bringing sustainability to affordable housing by re-imagining the idea of “home” through thoughtful, efficient and ecological design.

The full potential of prefabricated housing, whether at the scale of walls panels, room size modules or other large-scale components, is still to be discovered. Carefully considered prefabrication can help reduce both construction costs and utility bills. In fact, this has always been presented as the promise of prefab housing. So why have the many compelling prefab designs from the last sixty years not lived up to this potential? Why are the Case Study homes now high end housing? Why did Buckminster Fuller and Jean Prouvé never get beyond a few exquisite prototypes? Why are the many beautifully designed homes that have appeared in Dwell magazine beyond the means of those in the bottom half of the Area Median Income (AMI)?

The answer is two fold: first, the economic model of these visionary projects typically depended upon the assumption that once the brilliance of the designer’s idea was recognized, the project would go into production, and significant savings will result. These projects often depend too much on the potential cost efficiency of the production phase and not enough on controlling hard costs in the prototype. If it costs 50% more to build an off-site prototype, it is unlikely the production versions can come in below the cost of a comparable site-built home. The financial efficiencies of prefabrication typically fall between 5 and 20% when compared to on-site construction.

Secondly, many contemporary prototypical designs are dependant upon the assumption that the industrialized housing industry in the U.S. will radically transform itself. Transformation is indeed possible within the housing industry, and to some degree it is happening already. It is believed that more than 25% of new housing starts are panelized, manufactured housing [trailers], or modular. However, housing in America will not transform overnight, and designs that are dependent upon a complete rethinking of the materials and the labor practices used today will remain marginal.

The ecoMOD project strives to be both visionary and practical. Our designs explore the potential of prefabrication, while rethinking certain aspects of it. While we believe that some practices within current conventional industrialized housing can be accepted, others must be directly challenged.

The project is embedded in the curriculum of the University of Virginia, and is intended to create well-built homes that cost less to live in, minimize damage to the environment and appreciate over time.

Over the next several years, UVA students and faculty are providing several prefabricated housing units through partnerships with Piedmont Housing Alliance (PHA) of Charlottesville and Habitat for Humanity (HFH). PHA will sell three of the units to low-income families in the Charlottesville area with down payment and financing assistance. One single-family house has been built in partnership with HFH for a family in Gautier, Mississippi displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Each completed house is to be monitored and evaluated carefully, with the results guiding the designs of subsequent houses.

Conventional prefabricated homes are sited without any consideration of solar or wind orientation, or local hydrology. The buildings themselves are aggressively ‘site-less’ – seemingly adaptable to any environment, yet entirely separate from their surroundings. In contrast, the intent of the ecoMOD designs is to create site-specific homes using natural lighting and ventilation, non-hazardous materials, renewable energy, and energy-efficient systems to help reduce environmental impact and improve occupant health.