Modular multifamily prototypes designed
A developer based in Aspen, Colorado, is working on modular multifamily housing designed to offer an affordable urban alternative for the notoriously expensive ski resort. Modular multifamily units have been mostly absent from the new urban toolbox. “We have been working over the last year on developing a series of urban modular housing prototypes with a leading modular provider,” says Tim Van Meter, of Van Meter Williams Pollack.
The provider is ModSystems SB, which will act as general contractor for a series of infill sites in Aspen, Van Meter says. The developer is looking at factories in Colorado and Idaho, and would like to start construction in 2010 or 2011.
The urban housing modular prototypes include: stacked flats; rowhouses; townhouses; and carriage houses. “The intent of these prototypes is to provide a menu of multifamily modular dwellings that could fit urban infill conditions, as well as prototypical new urban conditions, at less cost, on a faster schedule and far greener construction,” Van Meter says. ModSystems just completed a LEED Platinum multifamily modular infill development, he adds.
The actual construction cost per square foot is the same as stick-built, Van Meter says, but savings comes in the speed of construction. These units can be built in three months, as opposed to a year or more for conventional construction. This reduces finance and overhead costs for development, he says. The units also tend to be built to higher standards in a factory, he says, because of the controlled environment and the fact that modules have to withstand shipping (the trucking creates the equivalent of hurricane-force winds and earthquake-level shaking). The construction results in less air seepage and greener performance, he explains.
Because of the flatbed shipping, the units are a maximum of 16 feet wide, which leads to some unusually narrow proportions. The townhouses and rowhouses are two to three stories tall, up to 1,400 square feet in size. Ninety-five percent of construction will take place at the factory, Van Meter says, and each floor will be shipped separately and stacked on site. The roofs, flat or with shallow pitches, will be installed at the factory. There are also some smaller units, including a 700 square foot carriage house, and horizontally configured stacked flats. Some units include attached or detached garages.
The units have a distinctly “contemporary” design — Van Meter is careful about using that word as opposed to “modern.” Modernism mostly eliminates pitched roofs, eaves, and bases and tops to buildings — an approach that Van Meter rejects. But he’s also not interested in reviving traditional styles. “Contemporary is not a style, it reflects a condition here that is 2010,” he says. “It has to do with the level of craft, industrialization, and new materials. These are changing greatly. As I see it, architecture should reflect its time and its age.”
