Olson Kundig’s First Prefab Home Hits the Market at $4.2M in Silicon Valley
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The Seattle-based architecture firm partnered with Aro Homes on what it says is "one of the most environmentally positive houses it has ever designed."
The San Francisco Bay Area’s affordable housing shortage has spurred innovation in recent years, with prefab builders like Abodu and Mayasa developing turnkey ADUs homeowners can add to their backyards as rentals or in-law units. Now, one company is leveraging the potential of prefab construction to serve up high-end single-family residences, a market that hasn’t been feeling as much of a squeeze.
Aro Homes, a homebuilding startup with venture capital funding recently listed its first residence at $4.2 million in Mountain View, California. The 3,000-square-foot, four-bed, three-bath plan on a fifth of an acre is asking slightly more than the area average of $1,200 per square foot, according to data collected by Redfin; the average cost for a home in the city is $1.8 million.
The Silicon Valley spec home, which is now in contract to sell, is also the first prefabricated design by Olson Kundig, the Seattle-based architecture firm founded in 1966 by Jim Olson and Tom Kundig. The partners built a reputation for the firm by designing context-driven residences that emphasize a sense of place, whether a Costa Rican tree house, a forest retreat in Washington, or a Vermont cabin clad in Cor-Ten steel.
But nearly none have been as green as the home by Aro, which doesn’t require fossil fuels. "[It is] one of the most environmentally positive houses Olson Kundig has ever designed," attests principal Blair Payson, who joined Olson Kundig in 2004 and became part owner last year, according to an announcement from the firm.
See the full story on Dwell.com: Olson Kundig’s First Prefab Home Hits the Market at $4.2M in Silicon Valley
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