My Favorite Architect of the Week (10/14/09)

My favorite Architect of the Week goes to the duo Kieran Timberlake, comprised of Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake. Together they have designed one of the newest innovations in green pre-fab home design by the invention of the Loblolly House (pictured right). “It looks like a Borg Cube, has almost as much technology, and is as completely alien to construction as we know it.” (http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/01/the_wired_home_1.php)

Using a combination of glass, drywall, pipes, and wood framing they have created finished, pre-fabricated units, “each precision-engineered for cost, beauty, and sustainability," that differ from past likenesses through their minimal component-based design. “We want materials we can take apart, like used auto parts, as opposed to ending up with rubble,” Kieran says. Unlike many houses, even those built with sustainability in mind, Loblolly’s components, or elements, as the architects call them, could be unbolted and reconfigured at another site for a different house or, as the architects like to demonstrate in their public lectures, sold off in pieces on eBay (example to the left). Kieran Timberlake started the process by designing a set of materials and products that could be used interchangeably for each unit.

The architects utilized the method of interchangeable parts by having three tiers of suppliers and a final assembler, much in the way automotive companies outsource major components of each car with final assembly at factories throughout the world. In the case of the Loblolly House, Bensonwood—a New Hampshire–based timber-frame-house company—acted as both a supplier and the final assembler. Bensonwood recently completed a quasi-prefab house as part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Open Prototype Initiative, which streamlines a design-build approach for high-quality custom houses with quick construction schedules. Bensonwood, as well as a construction manager, Arena Program Management, collaborated with Kieran Timberlake to create the parts Loblolly utilizes. The interchangeable parts range in size and function, from the prefab room modules to the aluminum frame, green roof, and coffered floor system.