Dwell 12/1/2016

The allure of prefab is really about control. Control over timeline, control over budget, control over the site. But how many projects are built without at least one maddening, last-second complication? Judging from those glimpsed in this issue, not many. Long before the foundation was poured for Anthrazit House in Santa Barbara, Architects Magnus and EcoSteel explored how to protect the structure from wildfires like the one that destroyed the previous home on the property. The result combines concrete and glass with a fire-resistant prefabricated steel superstructure, an exterior skin of insulated metal panels, and a steel roof. Since most homes in the area are framed in wood, the architects spent additional time locating a steel erection team capable of assembling the structure. Installing the steel-and-glass stair alone required a…

LETTERS I wanted to comment on how I think dwell.com is just amazing. I love the new clean look of the articles with big photos and simple scrolling. It begs clean, modern, and minimalism, just like the architecture. Tim Melander St. Augustine, Florida We love your publication. You possess the ability to mix yesterday, today, and tomorrow in a very eloquent way! Specific to yesterday, I would love to see a story about “The House of Tomorrow,” built in Tomorrowland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which touts modular construction and innovations (1950s-style). Marsha Erik Seineke Prescott, Arizona We were new to Dwell when we found out our house was being published (“Happy Trails,” November 2016). That’s when we started subscribing. We really enjoy all your issues! Thanks again for all…

Rene Chun The work of Manhattan-based writer Rene Chun has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, New York, and Wired, where he is a regular contributor, as well as in the anthology series The Best American. He was greeted by a pleasant surprise when he visited a customized Breezehouse prefab in the lower Hudson Valley for this issue (page 90). “As soon as I entered the house, my allergies vanished,” he reports. “The residents explained that the air filtration system, combined with tight construction, kept the pollen outside.” What do you think explains prefab’s enduring appeal? “Le Corbusier nailed it when he said a house was ‘a machine for living.’ With its emphasis on technology, economy, and efficiency, prefab is the epitome of this philosophy.” Floto +…

At the height of their U.S. popularity after World War II, the luminaries of Danish design—Risom, Wegner, Jacobsen, and others—were as famous as movie stars. Less well known were the industrialists who discovered ways to distribute their work overseas. Even so, the extent to which history has forgotten C.W.F. France, the British entrepreneur whose manufacturing company once produced 60 percent of all Danish furniture exports, is hard to explain. More than just a businessman, France was a confrere of some of the country’s top midcentury designers. It was he who persuaded Finn Juhl to embrace flat-pack furniture, a novel idea that opened up a vast international audience to the duo. The scion of a Yorkshire textile family, France moved to Denmark in 1936 to help an ailing friend run his…

PROJECT The Village, Grow Community ARCHITECT Davis Studio Architecture + Design LOCATION Bainbridge Island, Washington Who said making a better world would be easy? Just ask the cast of characters involved in Grow Community, a development on Washington’s Bainbridge Island that was designed with the ambitious goal of encouraging social interaction while achieving net-zero energy status. Building for the future, they’ve learned, is a constant work in progress. A three-stage project on the former site of Navy housing, Grow was initially conceived by a small group as a way to responsibly increase density while utilizing prefab construction. In the years since its inception, Grow has weathered a number of controversies, including a revolving door of architects, construction delays, and a scaling back of its prefab plan—all on an island known…

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