Michelle Kaufmann

Prefab Trailblazer

Awards

Publications

• Featured in Prefab Modern, by Jill Herbers (2004);
• The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture, by Alanna Stang and Christopher Hawthorne ( 2005); also covered in many periodicals and newspapers including: 7x7, Atomic Ranch, Azure, Better Homes & Gardens, Builder, Domino, Dwell, Inc., Los Angeles, Men's Journal, Money Magazine, Paper, Sunset Magazine, Time Magazine, and Wired.

Q&A

What influenced you to take a "green" approach to design?

The solution of prefab came from me being a client and having a big problem. My husband, Kevin Cullen, and I were trying to find a place to live, and we couldn't find anything we liked that we could afford. After a painful 6 months, we decided to build something simple and sustainable for ourselves. Although our house ended up being primarily site-built (we did use SIPS panels for the floors, walls and roof), we had a number of friends and colleagues who were interested in the design and asked if I could do a similar design for them.

This raised an interesting question about the possibility of mass-production on a particular architectural design. I started researching mass-production solutions and found a number of modular factories. Only a few were interested in working with me (most of them preferred to maintain their existing selection of home models).

The benefits of modular construction combined with a modified architectural practice that streamlines the process results in a project that reduces time, creates a stronger built building with less waste than site-built and makes thoughtful, architecturally designed buildings accessible to more people.

Which architects and designers inspired you?

• The Eames - Charles and Ray Eames were a husband-and-wife team, pioneers in modernist design expressed in architecture, furniture and industrial design.
• Joseph Eichler - a post-WWII real estate developer who built modernist tract homes that have attracted a devoted following.
• Rem Koolhaas - a Dutch architect and writer, winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize in architecture.
• Frank Gehry - one of America's best-known modern architects, winner of the Pritzker Prize in architecture and designer of the revolutionary Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain.

Designs that inspire me include old Iowa rural barn structures, as well as Japanese architecture.

What other resources inspire you?

We look to product designer interfaces for clues on how to streamline our architectural process (i.e. ordering Apple products and custom Nike shoes online). These product services offer the good balance between mass-production and customization that we want to offer in our work and our process with clients.