This Shady Avenue home addition has undergone some pretty serious updates in 2021:  As a result of recent pandemic-induced wood and steel price increases, the cost for our original design, which you can review here, exceeded the owners’ budget.

Modular Construction

What to do?!!  We’ve been designing modular housing with developer, Jessie Wig, in Munhall. Perhaps, we considered, it may be possible to save the project by reconfiguring it out of PREFAB units!

The modular manufacturer reviewed our preliminary block configuration sketches and let us know that the curved project walls of our initial design would go away if we would work with them.  And the remaining materials and massing would be much simplified. Yet we WOULD be able to preserve our courtyard design concept which the clients had loved.

The owners let us know that they were on board as long as we could preserve their preferred features and finishes while bringing the price down to a place they could afford.  These images show where we are at this moment.  Process matters: We’re actually happier with the design of this much simplified new version than we we were with the original.

The contractor will have his updated numbers shortly.  Fingers crossed!  At Fisher ARCHitecture, we are ALWAYS looking for unexpected, out-of-the-box ways to provide our clients with what they want. In this instance, we are hopeful that modular construction can subtract twenty percent from the project cost.

Bits of Architecture

Here, once again, is a link to a video talking through our process developing the earliest project ideas. As we wrote before, if you are interested in how architects ACTUALLY conceive of ideas, as opposed to the way the process is presented on TV, this video may be of  interest to you.