Prefab-ulous

July 2006 Speacial Advertising Section

There’s the new Walker, the new Guthrie—not to mention that big blue box called IKEA. Could it be that Minnesotans are finally embracing modern design? It would seem so, according to architect Charlie Lazor, who has chosen the Twin Cities as home office for his FlatPak housing company.

A FlatPak House is prefab construction, which means it’s assembled from components that are made in a factory, then shipped to the building site. Assembled relatively quickly, efficiently, and economically compared to a custom home, prefab homes were born during the post-World War II housing boom. As a new way of looking at modern home design, prefab has been a topic of fascination for forward-thinking architecture and design aficionados for decades. But in the last few years, there has been a resurgence in public interest on both coasts—and now in the Midwest, thanks to innovative architects like Lazor, who built his own FlatPak home here on the Greenway.

“When I built my house I was expecting some negative feedback, and I got nothing but warmth and praise,” Lazor says. “There is a shift in how people look at houses that is evident here.” Part of this shift is the result of stereotypes that have been dispelled about modern design in a cold climate. Due to advancements in technology, the abundance of glass in prefab design has become a benefit rather than a liability in northern climes. “Glass has insulating capabilities that it didn’t have a generation ago,” Lazor says. “We can all agree that daylight in our living environment is great, and we can all agree that looking out to nature is beneficial.”

Saving money is also beneficial, and the FlatPak House is more affordable than an equivalent custom-built modern home—about 30–40 percent cheaper, according to Lazor. “Empyrean, our manufacturing partner, assembles components and then sends them to the site,” Lazor says. “So, working with them is a highly predicable process as far as cost schedule.” The price for a FlatPak House also includes a designer who works with clients to configure those components and materials. This collaborative process helps dispel another myth about modern design—that it is cold and impersonal. “We have a material palette that runs from wood to concrete to glass and metal trim that is variable,” Lazor says. “We tend to do these houses with a balance of materials.”

Not only is the material usage much more variable, it is much more efficient, which should be music to the ears of environmentalists. “Most building sites have Dumpsters, and we just have little scrap bins in the plant.”

Lazor also buys from green suppliers and uses coatings with very low-volatile organic-compound emissions. FlatPak’s interior partitions and cladding are made from post-industrial pulp and have very low formaldehyde emissions and no added urea formaldehyde. The home itself is also “recyclable.” While Lazor is confident in the appeal of the FlatPak home, he jokes that if you don’t like it, you can always sell it on eBay. And he’s not entirely kidding—a FlatPak House can easily be unbolted, unscrewed, and erected in a new location.