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By Sara Hart

Working inside the box

Architect Joseph Tanney, AIA, acknowledges that architects are shut out of all but 4 percent of single-family residential building and virtually all of affordable, middle-class housing in the U.S. Tanney, with partner Robert Luntz, AIA, and a growing number of architects and designers, wants a piece of the action. His 10-person, New York–based firm, Resolution: 4 Architecture (www.re4a.com), was the winner of the 2003 Dwell Home Design Invitational, a competition to explore prefabrication as an alternative to stick-built homes. Not just another intellectual exercise within the profession, Resolution’s winning entry will be built for a client in North Carolina, and there’s reason to believe that Tanney and Luntz are emerging as the ambassadors for Modern Modular design and construction.

m-house, Tim Pyne Designed to meet the U.K. regulatory definition of a caravan, or mobile home, the unit is exempt from most building codes and regulations. Images: Courtesy Tim Pyne

The fact that the Dwell competition generated so much ink in the mainstream press suggests that there is serious interest in the commercial viability of affordable prefabricated homes. Tanney and Luntz have exposed two truths about factory-built housing. First of all, it’s not inferior to stick-built construction. As a matter of fact, fabrication in a controlled environment produces components that are more consistent in quality than those built on-site in all kinds of weather by a labor force of varying skill.

This truth then begs the question, why aren’t all homes built in factories? Traditional home builders build traditional homes, which are rendered in familiar quasi-historical styles. Conventional wisdom says that this is what the middle-class American consumer wants. It’s hard to argue with a huge industry that saw an estimated 1.7 million housing starts in 2002. Tanney and Luntz, however, have uncovered the second truth: There is a considerable market for affordable Modern residential architecture, and no one is serving it. The glamorous, sleek, high-concept houses that fill shelter magazines and professional journals, such as this one, are one-offs that require unconventional methods and materials, which make them prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest clients.

 

Modern Modular, Resolution: 4 Architecture Joseph Tanney and Robert Luntz have applied their experience and skills designing custom urban residences to developing a system of prefabrication employing “modules of use”—factory-produced, easy-to-transport rectangular units. Rather than reinventing the process, the firm incorporates off-the-shelf materials and techniques. The prototypes shown above represent mass-customization possibilities in the Modern Modular system, bringing Modernism down to earth. Images: Courtesy Resolution: 4 architecture nottoscale (opposite)

Besides the fact that traditional builders are content with the market status quo, Tanney has also observed that architects have failed to understand the methodology of builders. Those who have approached home builders with innovative but unconventional ideas are greeted with resistance, if not downright hostility. The philosophy at Resolution: 4 Architecture is as ingenious as it is simple: work within the box if you want to build. “We harness what’s out there and don’t reinvent the process,” explains Tanney. The firm first funded its own research into established prefabrication processes, then applied the knowledge to its own brand of modular Modernism.