Allison Arieff says in The New York Times, in addition to the 1,500 modular apartment units at the 32-story Brooklyn Atlantic Yards and the ten-story micro modular apartments with 55 units being designed by nArchitects in Manhattan, GRO Architects is constructing over 300,000 square feet of modular housing in Baltimore and Jersey City, NJ. Gluck+ is building a 28 unit steel and concrete modular complex in Manhattan for those of moderate means. She says site-built construction has not changed in decades, whereas modular promises better design and innovation and a better path to good architecture. Sponsoring a competition to design an affordable modular home as editor of Dwell magazine, and subsequently licensing Dwell-designed homes, she concluded that “Prefab is best utilized in the design and construction not of single-family homes but of multifamily housing.” From an architect’s point of view, each single-family home is a new design which raises costs and makes for expensive production. Nicole Robertson of GRO Architects says of modular building: “There is sheer economy of scale that emerges as we build a dense multifamily project, and it is the integration of digital technology on both the design and fabrication side that make the end product sustainable.” Arieff says the developers of commercial and institutional projects have been more willing to be innovative in using modular applications, and the residential sector needs to catch up. The expanding rental market should be a prime target of multifamily modular housing, as MHProNews has learned.

(Image credit: The New York Times/GRO Architects–Jackson Green in Jersey City, NJ)