In Cellophane House we saw a real life example on display at MOMA New York of how modular construction methods and eco design can meet to create houses for the future.

To quickly jog your memory the house by Philadelphia architects KieranTimberlake was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit titled “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling.” Among other things it served as a demonstration of how efficient modular house construction could be, and how eco-friendly it could be at the same time.

The methods used in Cellophane House though actually spring from KieranTimberlake’s earlier project called Loblolly House, a single family house located on the Chesapeake Bay.

Loblolly Wins
The Loblolly concept pushed the idea of a modular house being designed and fabricated off-site, and then assembled on site. But the breakthrough was Loblolly’s integrated assembly design so that the house could be disassembled and redeployed without waste. The typical bulldozing of a used up house then taken to the land refuse would be almost totally eliminated.

That idea has now been recognized as the winner of the second annual Lifecycle Building Challenge 2 competition sponsored by the US EPA.

House Assembly
The process of building a house like Loblolly starts with a three dimensional design using Building Information Modeling (BIM) which as KieranTemberlake says “demonstrates how off-site fabrication has the potential to redefine and streamline the architectural process…reducing cost, time and labor.”

Def: Loblolly, a pine tree of the southern U.S. that has very long slender needles and is an important source of timber.

The Thousands of parts that make up a standard house are then reduced to a small number of integrated components. Those components get fabricated by a factory and then attached to an industrial aluminum frame.

The floor and ceiling components are pre-wired for electrical and mechanical functions off-site then just plugged in to a mechanical room block. Similarly the exterior wall components contain the structure, insulation, and windows, while the house’s exterior contains a wood rain screen.

Amazingly the on-site assembly of Loblolly House was completed in just six weeks. This factor which can easily be overlooked is actually quite important though as anyone who has lived next door to a typical stick house being constructed for the better part of a year can attest to.

The benefits of KieranTimberlake’s Loblolly house extend from a more energy efficient product to less construction waste to expandability and mobility. And much of this was demonstrated with Cellophane House at MOMA so it’s more than just an abstract design idea – we’ve seen it in action.

That’s a big push for the eco-friendly house of the future.

Media: Loblolly House