The Return Of The 'Housing Kit' -- With A Twist

"Forget boxes on wheels and tacky subdivisions. Prefab is now just plain fab... Once the poor stepchild of residential construction, so-called systems-built housing is now the province of topflight architects, who are reinventing the genre with innovative designs, new building components and environmentally friendly approaches.

...Inspired by the Sears, Roebuck mail-order homes that sprang up in the early 1900s, "designer prefab" spans a number of highly nuanced — and often confounding — housing categories. Variously described as systems-built, modular, panelized, kit or manufactured, prefab homes are constructed at least partially in factories before being transported to building sites."