The not so expensive house

Canada’s Grow Homes and Next Homes have made home ownership affordable through reduced size and modular design. The concept may be a good fit for small-lot, traditional neighborhoods. The first Grow Home prototype was built on the campus of McGill University in Montreal in 1990, and immediately attracted widespread attention. Designed by architects Avi Friedman and Witold Rybczynski of McGill’s School of Architecture, the townhouse was only 14 feet wide and 36 feet deep. The basement or a second floor would be left unfinished for the buyers to complete according to their needs — hence the term “grow.” This kind of flexibility is even more pronounced in the Next Home, which Friedman and collaborators designed in 1996. The three-story townhome can be used as a single home, a duplex, or a triplex. Though it is wider than the Grow Home, the house does not rely on loadbearing walls, making it easy to modify floor plans. The Next Home is a response to the growing number of people working out of their homes, as well as to the shrinking of the traditional family, Friedman says. The Grow Home has found a significant market, especially among first-time home buyers who are willing to make a tradeoff on the size of their home. To date, more than 10,000 units have been sold, primarily in Canada, but also in Europe, Latin America, and the US. By US standards, the price is extraordinarily low — according to Friedman, Grow Homes still have a base price of approximately $60,000 (US), including the cost of the land. Despite the low sales price, Grow Homes have been marketed as “prestige townhouses with an innovative layout” rather than “affordable” homes, a strategy which has proved successful. Their reduced size and ease of construction are the main reasons for the units’ low price. According to Friedman, the simple, rectangular configuration has 20 percent less perimeter than an L-shaped unit of the same size. Moreover, builders have been able to reduce labor and material costs using modular building elements, and the design includes as few complex joints and details as possible. Friedman maintains that even adding one foot to the width would increase the cost 25 percent. The narrow townhouse would seem ideal for vacant lots in infill locations, but interestingly, most Grow Home units in Canada have been built in suburban subdivisions. Three, six, or eight units are typically built next to each other. Frontloaded garages are sometimes built below grade in both Grow and Next Homes, but where alleys are available, parking is typically above ground and at the rear of the homes. Cost reduction and choice expansion As with the Grow Home, the dimensions of the Next Home are adjusted to fit modular sizes. Not only does this allow builders to use standard materials, but waste is reduced by sizing the frame so that any wood cut off below the floor will fit somewhere else in the frame. Careful planning can lead to similar reductions in waste of interior materials such as drywall and floor tiles. Friedman estimates the average Next Home construction cost to be about $35/sq.ft. Flexibility is the hallmark of the Next Home — it is designed to be easy to subdivide or change before or after it is occupied. Use of the so-called open-web joist helps make adaptability possible. “Open-web is a type of joist that due to its structural design and characteristics permits greater spans, thereby eliminating the need for bearing walls,” Friedman says. In addition, the open vertical side of the joist allow conduits and pipes to be pulled through easily. To cut the cost of and to facilitate post-occupancy modifications in the floor plan, all water pipes, vents, and wires are located in a single vertical shaft running through the entire building. On each floor these pipes and conduits are directed to a horizontal chaser, which runs along the building’s long dimension. As a result, residents will not have to disturb the walls or the ceiling to make changes. Where the Grow Home left floors unfinished, the Next Home gives buyers a range of options for placement of rooms and access between floors. This allows them to buy only what they need or can afford at the moment, and the concept has proved very popular, says Jose Di Bona of Anobid Construction Corp. in Montreal. He has built approximately 80 Next Homes in downtown Montreal and many Grow Homes as well. “People like to be able to personalize the interiors, and it’s a very simple process to customize,” Di Bona says. “For us, the major advantage is that we can subdivide the buildings vertically after completion.” Friedman and his collaborators conceived of these flexible homes in tough economic times when affordability was paramount. “ The Grow Home gave people a crack at home ownership,” Di Bona says, “but today we sell to different demographic groups, especially empty nesters. Now the Next Home is seen more as innovative than inexpensive.” Anobid’s 1,600 sq. ft. attached units in Montreal sell for approximately $142,000; units of 1,000 square feet begin at $84,000. Builders who wish to build Next Homes must first acquire the rights from McGill University through Friedman, who will supply plans and architectural guidelines. The full story of the home designs of Friedman and his collaborators will be available in his upcoming The Grow Home Book, to be published by McGill University Press in April.