Project Description
The White Black Box House is factory prefabricated in five transportable modules. This modular building system is designed to be highly-cost effective, flexible for multiple variants and adaptations, rapid to construct, and offering high sustainability values for green construction—all while providing a high-quality, high-quality of life and stylish home. The house uses conventional building materials carefully selected for cost-effectiveness, yet provides bright, spacious rooms for a growing family on tight, semi-urban infill sites attractive to young families. The house is available in many variants for various site conditions and individual homeowner requirements, and is available as net-zero energy capable, with high insulation values and options for photovoltaic energy production and other energy conserving and energy producing design components. This house was constructed at a factory in Salem, Oregon, complete with all fixtures, appliances, systems and surfaces, trucked to a site in Menlo Park, California, with all modules installed on previously site-built foundations in a six hour period. After this initial day of crane work and joining of the modules, final completion of the house on site includes a limited amount of work joining utility and electrical junctions at module lines, and infilling surface components along module lines. The approach is designed to significantly reduce cost, resource consumption, construction time and complexity for new homeowners, while still providing wide latitude for personalization of the design, and high-quality construction.