Prefab used to get a bad rap. Mass-produced in factories, modular homes were considered cheap, like the architectural equivalent of TV dinners. Buster Keaton famously parodied the prefab house in his 1920 slapstick film One Week, in which a couple receives as a wedding gift a home-in-a-box that can supposedly be built in a week. It doesn't go so well.
Image: Prefab Home, out from Taschen, documents the history of the factory-made house and features today's most innovative designs. Here, the WeeHouse, inspired by the basic principles of sustainable design--building small and efficiently. COURTESY OF ALCHEMY LLC
