Check out these links to GreenSource case studies:

Nanyang Technological University

University of California at Merced

Sidwell Friends Middle School

Lillis Business Complex

Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies

The opening pages of Prefab Modern by Jill Herbers give a summarized history of the development of the prefab home. I established the following timeline based on Herbers’s publication:

1830 – The first prefab cast-iron house was completed in England.

1840s – Foundries in England and America produce structural components for metal housing and ship them to California, Australia, and Africa.

1849 (California Gold Rush) – Miners and prospectors lived in prefab homes shipped by mail.

1906 – Aladdin introduces the Readi-Cut House, the first true kit house composed of pre-cut, numbered pieces. Ultimately, the company sells 65,000 Readi-Cut model homes in 450 different designs.

1908-1940 – Sears, Roebuck, and Co. sells more than 100,000 mail-order houses, barns, and multi-family apartment buildings. The homes arrive by railroad in up to 30,000 pieces accompanied by a 75-page leather-bound instruction book.

1910-1918 – Architect Grosvenor Atterbury develops a construction system based on hollow-core precast concrete units and full-height wall panels that are transported to the site and hoisted up by crane. He builds hundreds of homes in Forest Hills, NY.

1914 – Le Corbusier and Max Dubois design the Domino House. Its reinforced concrete framework (six columns supporting a floating flood slab and roof) eliminate a need for load-bearing walls.

1918 – Standard Oil develops Carlinville, Illinois to house their workers. The homes are all prefab, ordered from Sears, Roebuck, and Co.

1923 – Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer develop a “building block” system of standardized flat-roof housing and design a construction system for the Toerten-Dessau housing system.

1927 – Buckminster Fuller designs the Dymaxion House, a round house built using tension suspension from a central mast. The house is easy to disassemble, transport, and reassemble. It has a living/dining room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, a library, and a sundeck.

1929 – Konrad Wachsmann designs and builds a prefab home for Albert Einstein in Caputh, Germany.

1931 – Albert Frey designs the Aluminaire House, the first house in America built entirely of light steel and aluminum.

1932 – Howard Fisher founds the General Homes Corporation, a company that models home production after the way General Motors produces cars.

1933-1934 Chicago World’s Fair – The House of Tomorrow, designed by George and William Keck, is on display. The three-story house took just three days to build on-site and features amenities like a dishwasher and air conditioning.

1932 – Robert McLaughlin founds American Homes and soon introduces American Motohomes, affordable housing designed in response to the economic hardship of the Great Depression.

Mid-1930s – Frank Lloyd Wright designs the Usonian house. This affordable housing solution is designed with a flexible grid system and repeating details. Expensive features, from basements and garages to radiators and plaster, are eliminated to conserve costs.

WWII – The US Navy contracts the George A. Fuller construction company to design the Quonset hut in response to the logistical problem of moving and housing troops. The lightweight portable huts have a steel-frame foundation and a skeleton of semicircular steel ribs covered with corrugated sheet metal. After the war, the huts are adapted into veterans’ homes, churches, stores, student housing, and industrial buildings.

Post-WWII – Walter Gropius and Konrad Wachsmann form the General Panel Corporation and design houses using interchangeable parts and a standardized system. New building materials (enamel and aluminum) make construction less expensive and time-consuming. The company goes out of business in 1951.

1945 – John Entenza (editor of Arts and Architecture Magazine) initiates the Case Study Houses program. Each case study is intended to develop from the needs of a particular client/homeowner. Prefab works launched from this program include:

• The Eames Case Study (1949) – designed by Charles and Ray Eames, the house was designed for a working couple with no children. The house was built entirely of prefab parts.
• Stahl House (Pierre Koenig, 1960) – A prefab “glass block” house designed in Minimalist fashion.
• Johnson House (Craig Ellwood, 1952) – Constructed with an easy-to-assemble steel and timber structural system.
• Hale House (Craig Ellwood, 1949) – Designed with an uninterrupted glass facade and thin 10-inch timber roof beams.
• Rosen House (Craig Ellwood, 1961) – Constructed with steel framing and masonry panels.

1947 – William Levitt begins building prefab communities for returning GIs, the most famous being Levittown, NY. By 1948 he was building 150 homes a week.

1948 – The Lustron Corporation begins producing prefab all-steel houses in a former aircraft factory. Production problems led to the company’s bankruptcy in 1950.

1948 – Mobile home designs begin to include bathrooms, leading to their increased popularity in the 1950s.

1950 – The French government commissions furniture designer Jean Prouve to develop housing for mass production. Twenty-five of the homes were installed in Meudon, France, each delivered by a single truck and assembled in one day by a four-man team. The homes were thermally insulated and made of steel, aluminum, and timber. Although every house was sold, the French government chose not to adopt the design for low-cost housing.

1950s and 1960s – Techbuilt mass produces homes made of converging components that can be used at the builders’ and owners’ discretion.

1960s – Buckminster Fuller builds geodesic dome buildings based on his patented 20-sided polyhedron known as the icosahedron. The dome’s success lies in its lightweight, easily transportable construction that maintains its structural integrity when subjected to earthquakes and hurricane strength winds.

How including rammed-earth walls in a building can get you LEED points:

Energy & Atmosphere Credit 1: Optimize Energy Performance (1-10 points)

Rammed earth walls work as a thermal mass, meaning that they delay the transfer of heat in and out of the building. A thermal mass regulates the interior temperature of a building as the exterior temperature fluctuates. Utilizing a thermal mass as a form of passive heating/cooling is most effective in a climate that experiences hot days and cool nights – heat will radiate from the walls inward on a cool night, but will be slowed to enter the interior space on a hot day. Ultimately, this effect reduces the need for mechanical heating and cooling, which contributes to optimal energy performance.

Materials & Resources Credit 5.1-5.2: Regional Materials
10% (1 pt) or 20% (2 pts)Extracted, Processed, & Manufactured Regionally (Within 500 miles)
*Exemplary Performance for buildings with 40% regional materials

Here, the earth walls can contribute to up to 3 LEED points. After all, what’s more readily available in every region than dirt? Unless your site soil has the ideal sand-to-clay ratio, you may choose to get your screened soil from a sand and gravel yard (within 500 miles, of course – and make sure that the mixture originated within 500 miles of your site as well). You may be able to stabilize and use the soil from your own site even if its properties aren’t perfect, but it will probably cost more than getting the fill from a yard. Fortunately, going this route may benefit you even more in the LEED point area, as the percentage of regional materials you use is based on cost.

Rammed-earth walls also pair well with:

Materials & Resources Credit 2.1-2.2: Construction Waste Management
-Reuse and recycle the formwork used to build the walls.

Indoor Environmental Quality Credit 4.1: Low-emitting materials: adhesives & sealants.
-Skip the paint on these earthen walls and use a low VOC sealer.

Indoor Environmental Quality Credit 7.1: Thermal Comfort: Design
-The walls’ thermal mass properties contribute to a comfortable thermal environment that supports the productivity and well-being of building occupants.

More on rammed-earth walls:

Rammed Earth Development, Inc.

Rammed Earthworks

Earth Materials Guidelines