Suburban Subdivision Using VEGO Panels

The inclination to build housing inside factories rather than outside on site is definitely a good development. The question is how best to go about it. When the mobile home first emerged some hundred years ago, they were designed to be towed by car. In consequence they were quite small and thus amenable to construction on the factory floor. As well the customer drove to the factory to retrieve his new home. There was no set up involved nor land required.

While the mobile home of the past has evolved into the modular home of the present, what hasn't significantly evolved is its method of construction. Where portable trailers were once hand built in the factory, large box like modules are hand built today. This time around however the finished products must be carried to the building site and lifted into place. In comparison to the mass production methods found in most factories, factory home production does not really qualify as mass produced. While many of its production methods have been automated and even robotized, the high throughput rate of most factories has yet to be achieved.

Entrepreneurs have come to the conclusion that a fundamentally new construction paradigm is in order for mass production to be realized. The new paradigm at present is the panelized housing system, a system evidently inspired by the flatpack sheet goods furniture industry where components are precut and predrilled for use with standardized fasteners - a personal favorite being the Clamex system from the Swiss company Lamello.

Which brings us to VEGO, perhaps the most cutting edge building technology. Companies like FRAMECAD offer the ability to fabricate cold-rolled structural elements from coiled sheet steel. Such elements can be joined together by just a few semi skilled workers as opposed to the crew of skilled carpenters required for wood frame construction. The problem is that these subassemblies must still be hauled out to the construction site and craned into place. And such assemblies are only structural. Utilities have to be routed in and cladding and insulation attached. The brilliance of VEGO is that it does all of this and more at the level of panel production and in the factory.

Intrigued by the ease of construction and high level of integration VEGO panels offer I have drawn up a single level turn down slab house intended to be built with the VEGO 450mm wide, 100mm deep panels. As per one of the model homes on the VEGO website this house has 12 foot ceilings throughout. The design is simplicity itself: Four en suite bedrooms - a combination storage and utilities hallway connecting bedrooms, living, and carport - a galley style kitchen and dining - and a home theater style living room. The houses are arranged in such a way that the hallway wall serves as a party wall to create for each unit a private garden courtyard for the house next door perhaps

best explained in the drawings below.

The first set of drawings are schematics showing how walls, doors, windows, and cabinetry are configured. The second set are AI renderings intended to convey a sense of look and feel.

Each house is some 29 feet wide by 104 feet long working out to around 3,000 sq ft. Each lot is some 50 feet wide by 146 feet long or around 7,300 sq ft working out to a density of some 6 units per acre.

The courtyard runs the full length of the lot. At the street end there is a raised terrace just above the hot tub. At the other end is a sanctuary style flower garden just to the side of the outdoor living room. Toward the middle of the courtyard is an outdoor kitchen with storage shed on the left and outdoor dining on the right.

It should be noted that the carport and raised terrace are intended to be constructed from lumber and after the panel house is assembled. Same story in the back for the U shaped wood fence around the outdoor sofa and sanctuary garden. A bracing strategy for this wall may be necessary to carry the load / moment arm generated by the rather large awning.

It should be feasible to offer quite a bit of customization to this simple floorplan which is based on Frank Lloyd Wright's New York Exhibition house of 1953. For example with the steel frame window walls which have recently become available it should an easy matter to more closely approximate the window wall of Wright's New York house.