Affordable Modern Housing

Modern home design is unfortunately, usually a high-end affair for the rich and posh amongst us. Take a magazine like Dwell, for example. They feature some really great design and innovative techniques and technology. Unfortunately, it's really more of a Architecture Digest for the modern crowd than anything useful for designing or building your own home. The ads, typically one of the most useful parts of a design mag, feature high-end designer Italian kitchens, and $4000 sofas. No thanks. Dwell will occasionally stoop to writing an article about "affordable" home design, but it's pretty clear their hearts aren't in it. The affordable modern home is typically extremely small and built/designed by the owner. Or they might just suggest that $200/sq ft is affordable in someplace that isn't L.A. In another one of their stories, the happy homeowners had spent thousands on stainless steel appliances from Viking or Wolf or similar. But they professed the need to watch their budget, and they were so proud of themselves for saving money by buying $20 bar stools.

Affordable modern furnishings can be had from a few places, and as I've mentioned before, two of my favorite haunts are IKEA and Target. But what to do about the actual home?



It was with great interest that I read recently about IKEA's partnership to build affordable modern homes, called BoKlok (pronounced BOO klook). They've been doing it in Scandinavia for some years, and have recently expanded to the English language world by partnering with LiveSmart@Home in the UK. The homes have a Scandinavian style, and are of course loaded up with IKEA furnishing and fixtures, but more importantly, they are AFFORDABLE. In the UK, they are targeting familes in the $35K to $70K income range. That's middle income America, if the homes were ever to make it here. There are several different styles, like the single family home pictured above, but also apartment buildings and townhouses.

They all feature many of the hallmarks of modern design: clean lines, natural materials, energy efficiency, and multi-use spaces.



One aspect of Boklok that makes it affordable doing some of the construction in a factory, that is pre-fab. Pre-fab is not the same as a manufactured home, such as a mobile home. The pieces of a pre-fab home are built in a factory, then shipped to the home site where they are assembled. A pre-fab home minimizes waste, takes advantage of assembly line techniques, and eliminates exposure to the weather. But the construction materials and specs can be the same as with a site built home.



All I want to know now is, when can I get one?

Links:
http://www.gizmag.com/go/7108/
http://www.boklok.co.uk/