Shadyside Modular

Shadyside Modular: This Shady Avenue home addition changed quite a bit in 2021 as we tried to bring the price down to meet the client’s target. 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.

What to do?!! At the time, we were 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 it would not be possible to include any of the curved project walls that characterized our initial design if we worked with them. 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 ended up. Process matters. We’re actually happier with the design of this much simplified new Shadyside Modular than we we were with the original.

The contractor updated his numbers. Unfortunately, he suggested that modular construction would not bring the price down at all and that the stick-built norm was actually less expensive. This stopped the project in its tracks.

Our experience at Fisher ARCHitecture is that modular construction CAN save produce cost savings over conventional construction. The amount of savings varies widely and can depend on A) the design’s complexity and B) the owner’s contract arrangement with the modular manufacturer and the contractor. 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 were hopeful that modular construction can subtract twenty percent from the project cost. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way.

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.