The World’s 11 Most Stunning Prefabricated Architecture Projects
Building prefabricated architecture was first explored with vigor after World War II, when architects found themselves in the unique position of needing to create lots of housing quickly for returning veterans and their families. Prefabricated architecture is constructed off-site, often in modules that are shipped to their destination and then assembled. Not only does the process save time, it reduces the number of human errors that occur on the job site and the amount of material needed and wasted, cutting both construction and environmental costs.
For these reasons, architects across the world have been exploring its potential in projects of all typologies. Prefabricated architecture has been touted as a potential solution to the global affordable housing crisis, a playbook to create fast and inexpensive temporary emergency shelters, and a path to reducing the building industry’s harmful climate effects. However, despite modular architecture’s premade parts, a design doesn’t have to be made en masse, nor does it exclude beauty, detail, and innovation. These 11 examples prove that prefabricated architecture, historic or contemporary, can be even more eye-catching than traditional construction.
Photo: Ensamble Studio/Massimo Loia1/11Hemeroscopium House by Ensamble Studio, Madrid, Spain
This unique house located in Madrid may look complicated but is made up of only seven components: large prefabricated concrete I-beam and C-channel pieces that are stacked in a helix, steel truss supports, and a 20-ton block of granite. Despite the sheer weight of these building blocks, they form a structural system that is open and cantilevered, filling the home with light and air. Once the pieces were on-site, they took only seven days to construct—a far cry from the average 7 to 12 months that a typical house takes to build.
Photo: Iain Masterton/Alamy2/11Unité d’Habitation by Le Corbusier, Berlin, Germany
Modernist architect Le Corbusier’s first Unité d’Habitation concrete housing complex in Marseille, France, was built in 1952 with prefabricated parapets and dividing walls on the façade. By 1958, the architect had chosen to use largely modular construction for the apartment block in Berlin. The early Brutalist style of the béton brut building, which features uniform terraces for each unit, is enlivened by its colorful façade, designed by the architect in collaboration with French painter Fernand Léger.
Photo: Getty Images/Walter Bibikow3/11Eames House by Charles and Ray Eames, Los Angeles, California, USA
One of the most famous examples of prefabricated design is the Pacific Palisades home and studio of the late power couple Charles and Ray Eames. Constructed in 1949 using what they described as “honest” materials like glass, wood, and steel, the home included lots of prefabricated components like H columns, structural steel, and roof joists and was originally intended to be a case study for how a modern home could be built inexpensively and efficiently. They blew the budget but the design result is extraordinary.
Photo: Courtesy of NLÉ4/11Floating Music Hub by Kunlé Adeyemi, Cape Verde
On the island of São Vicente in Cape Verde, Amsterdam-based Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi has constructed a permanent arts center that just happens to be floating atop the Atlantic Ocean. This music hub is made up of three triangular pavilions constructed with the architect’s Makoko Floating System, described on his website as “a simple way to build on water using lightweight, prefabricated, modular timber elements that can be assembled and disassembled easily,” which are docked around a similarly buoyed plaza. The project contains a performance space, recording studio, and bar, all of which can be used for creative events and practice and are lit by colorful triangular windows.
Photo: Courtesy of Niall McLaughlin Architects5/11Saltmarsh House by Niall McLaughlin Architects, Isle of Wight, England
Greenhouse design informed this prefab steel-framed house on a tidal marsh on England’s Isle of Wight. London-based architecture studio Niall McLaughlin Architects arranged this pavilion-like home with a copper roof based on a 16-foot-square grid of four-part columns. Its private living spaces—the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom—are the only solid volumes, but despite the amount of glazing it achieves a highly effective thermal performance.
Photo: Getty Images/Lee Snider6/11Habitat ’67 by Moshe Safdie, Montreal, Canada
This grad school thesis turned Canadian 1967 Expo pavilion put architect Moshe Safdie on the map with its exploration of factory-built modular design in an urban setting. Using 365 prefabricated concrete boxes, the Montreal apartment complex stacks 148 units (originally 158), each with their own garden, and connects them with a series of pedestrian walkways and children’s play areas. The modules are load bearing and together they create their own interconnected structural system for the 12-story project.
Photo: Jeff VanBergen and Skylab Architecture7/11Taft Residence by Skylab Architecture and Method Homes, Portland, Oregon
This two-story, 3,930-square-foot home by architecture firm Skylab was built using 28 of their 100-square-foot triangular prefab HOMB modules, a modular prefabrication system the studio developed with Method Homes. Each independent module is preconstructed with its building systems and finishes, and after being trucked to the sloping residential site in Portland, Oregon, the house was constructed in one day. Its exterior is clad in a blackened cedar rainscreen, which allows easy drainage during the Pacific Northwest’s frequently wet weather, and runoff is captured by landscape planters while a heat recovery system and solar panels further contribute to its sustainable design.
Photo: Getty Images8/11Les Arcs by Charlotte Perriand, France
This modernist 1960s ski resort in the French Alps was architect Charlotte Perriand’s most innovative prefabrication project. Constructed in stages to grow with visitor popularity, the resort includes four villages of wood-detailed apartment blocks that are built with their hillside sites. Inside, Perriand focused on local materials and designed colorful modular kitchen and bathroom units that were made holistically off-site and easily “plugged” into the interiors.
Photo: Sophie Delaporte9/11Prefabricated Accessible Technological Homes by Philippe Stark and Riko
In collaboration with prefab company Riko, French architect and designer Philippe Starck launched this line of net-positive energy homes that integrate solar, thermal, and wind harnessing technologies in 2014. In addition to saving owners construction time and money, the so-called P.A.T.H homes are customizable with several options for structure, roofs, and finishes, all of which are focused on connections (visual or physical) to the outside. Many highly energy-efficient homes achieve this status through the use of thick insulated walls and small windows, but the P.A.T.H. homes take the opposite approach, creating prefabricated designs that are sustainable and chic.
Photo: Brett Boardman Photography10/11Macquarie University Incubator by Architectus, Sydney, Australia
This 10,300-square-foot hybrid teaching space and startup incubator at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, was constructed in only five months, thanks to its architects’ use of prefabricated mass timber components. Conceived as a series of connected pavilions to encourage collaboration while simultaneously allowing for individual work, its timber structure is exposed throughout, forming handsome architectural patterns on the interior and exterior of the building. Both sustainable and functional, the material also imbues the design with a warm, calming spirit.
Photo: Fernando Guerra | FG+SG11/11VDC Housing by Summary, Portugal
When Portuguese architecture firm Summary was asked to design a mixed-use housing building on a narrow roadside site, it put its Gomos System to use. Inspired by the construction of sewer pipes, the system prefabricates modules, including all finishes, insulation, and windows, in a factory before shipping them to be assembled like a continuous shell. For the VDC Housing in Vale de Cambra, the slabs, structural panels, and entire first floor were made with the Gomos System and the six independent houses atop it are also modular.
