Pre Engineered Steel Buildings

Perhaps it is the way "prefab" rolls off the tongue like a delicious dessert. Or maybe it is the magnificent luster of a little box that is paradoxically modest and garish, opulent and frugal, retro and futuristic. These intriguing, quickly-assembled, factory-made pre-engineered steel buildings hold such promise. Can they deliver us from this lumber-dependent, environmentally destructive world? Can they offer the promise of trailer park modernization in a tasteful way that will appreciate property values? Can boomers downsize in style? Is this the post-modern, anti-mansion of the stars? Whatever the allure, famous architects have chosen prefab metal buildings as their playground.

In the school of architecture, modular or prefab steel buildings represent clean clutter-free lines, the minimalist geometric shapes of nature and a throwback to primitive man. Part of the fun with these designs is that they can be linked together like Lego pieces, mixed and matched, built up or deduced down. Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller envisioned these smart designs being mass produced as quickly and efficiently as an automobile on an assembly line. Fuller particularly felt prefabs could change the way people lived. Initially, it was a vehicle for avant-garde expressionism for experienced architects who were bored with trends of the times, but now it has extended to home owners via the internet, allowing people to customize their steel buildings however they see fit.

Pre engineered steel buildings have become the darling of many famous architects. Ray Kappe, winner of the Topaz Medal, shows off his eco-friendly prefab metal buildings at www.livinghomes.net. Renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed eleven prefab homes in Sevens Point, Bayside and Madison, Wisconsin. In the fifties, his homes sold for $55,000, which was extremely high back then. Le Corbusier was taken up with turn-of-the-century industrialism and the opportunity to build quick villages in factories to help post-war families start anew. Mies van der Rohe is often referred to as "the father of the glass and steel modernist skyscraper," although he also worked on a very small scale to create structures that lacked ornamentation, instead reveling in clean, simple lines.

The first pre engineered steel buildings were built around the idea of comfort and a do-it-yourself attitude. In the 1830s, London carpenter H. Manning built "the Manning Portage Cottage" after immigrating to Australia. Since he didn't want to deal with the hassle of tracking down materials in the new land, he needed to construct his house of pieces he could bring with him on a ship. Once his prefab building turned out well, he began importing and raising a number of cottages. In 1908, Sears, Roebuck and Co. marketed metal building kits by catalogue, costing less than two-thirds of a traditional house. In fact, more than 100,000 sold. Far less prefab metal buildings sell these days, but people use prefabs as metal storage buildings, steel barns, office buildings and more.