Susanka thinks that architects are ready to embrace a new system where, instead of creating one home for one client and then putting the blueprint away in a drawer, the design could be sold 2,000 or 3,000 times to others.Īverage home buyers never consider employing architects because of the usual high expense and therefore rarely discover novel or interesting designs. Considering the amount of money people spend on a house, Susanka asks, 'Wouldn't it be nice to know it was built well?' The automobile industry, for example, offers high-quality controls for consumers that do not exist in the housing market. there are very, very few controls on how housing is built today.' 'But the quality potential in a factory-built, panelized house is so much greater than what we have currently. 'There is systems-thinking that needs to change in how we're building homes,' Susanka says. Inspectors generally like to see electrical installations before clients close on the house. The big challenge is to convince American city inspectors to sign on to a new way of thinking. A contractor puts them together and connects prewired electrical conduits to a power source. In Sweden, where prefabricated homes are common, the pieces travel to home sites with the trim and drywall already combined in units. Sears sold bungalows in the early part of this century in the same manner, but home buyers eventually lost interest in the concept. The way I like to tell people to understand this is if you look at the map of a city, do you think you know what the city feels like from that?' After a client makes a selection, the home will be sent to them panelized - in pieces that a builder can quickly put together. 'Floor plans are telling (clients) nothing about the personality of the house.

'Today, everything people see is in two dimensions,' she said. The three-dimensional presentation is the key advantage to Susanka's homes.

Sarah susanka architect