Designs adopt ‘Japanese minimalism’ and ‘New York-style loft’ to recreational or infill property purposes

Kim Pemberton
Sun

Tony Robins in front of a Preform Construction home at last month’s spring home show. Ease of construction and ‘precision’ are the competitive attributes of the home, he says. Photograph by: Steve Bosch, Vancouver Sun

Vancouver architect Tony Robins has been active in the city’s architecture world for 30 years, winning international awards and critical acclaim for his designs, one of which is the much lauded Watermark Restaurant on Kits Beach.

These days the design Robins has been most interested in isn’t for a city landmark structure but rather modernist, modular residences ideally suited for recreational property or laneway housing.

His passion for designing prefabricated homes is such that Robins and two business partners, Mac Isaac and Ryan Spong, have created a new company called Preform Construction Ltd. with a 20,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Surrey. The site was specifically chosen to be close to the river for barging and to the road for shipping the units.

The first prefabricated house to roll out of the plant’s assembly line was showcased last month at the spring home show at BC Place.

What visitors saw there was a slick, one-bedroom, 500-square-foot residence that emphasized light, with large industrial windows, and despite the small footprint enjoyed a sense of spaciousness with 10-foot ceilings. The detail-rich home had custom kitchen and wardrobe cabinetry, built-in bed tables and surprisingly ample storage.

The linear home also had all the “bells and whistles” that define luxe living from stone countertops, to high-end bathroom and kitchen fixtures, stainless steel appliances and a green roof.

A basic home this size would sell for about $150,000, but with all the upgrades the price would be about $220,000, says Robins, bringing the square footage price tag to $300 to $400 per sq. foot.

“These (Preform homes) are much easier to build in a factory and you can have precision (with the building).”

Robins says the company also has its own high-end mill shop to provide custom cabinetry on site.

Workers at the new plant, under the guidance of builder Mike Dykstra, could make 12 of these smaller homes at the same time and have them ready to be shipped within four to six weeks.

In this these tough economic times it’s unusual for a new business to get off the ground, but Preform Construction already had guaranteed work of four large custom homes that will be pre-fabricated in the factory and orders are now coming in for the smaller, 500 sq. ft. model.

“It’s a turnaround time. That’s why we did the tiny house at the home show. People before would build a $1 million home on their recreational property. Now they think why not build a $200,000 home instead and have it ready to live in within weeks,” he says.

Robins, who like many architects has been influenced by the simplicity of Japanese homes, worked between 1993 and 1998 designing 12 restaurants in Japan. That experience of “Japanese minimalism rubbed off” when it came to designing his latest project, he says.

But despite the Japanese influence Robins believes these homes could be best described as a “New York style loft.”

“I love the simplicity of the interiors. It’s a lovely way to live. I’ve always been curious about living in small spaces and 10 years ago a Canada Council grant allowed me to look at mobile architecture,” says Robins.

His fascination with the architecture continues, and although he and his wife who raised their two children, ages 20 and 26, in a large 3,000 sq. ft. home he can envision the day when the couple downsize to one of his preform homes.

“I could see living in a lane way home and spending six months of the year in Europe. But we’re very busy doing this so that idea is in the future,” says the 57-year-old British born architect.

In the meantime, Robins is busy designing and building four, large custom homes for clients that will be prefabricated in the new factory, right down to the drywall and painting. The first of these homes is a 6,000 sq. ft. home that is destined for Tofino. It will be ready in June. Two of the other custom homes will be shipped to Pender Island and one on the Sunshine Coast.

These large, sculptural homes have been designed so they can be cut up and are boxes that would fit a 60-foot long truck and then assembled at the site.

“That’s the value (of the preform homes). If you have a remote location it costs a lot more to do construction (of a typical building). It could also take up to a year to build and you have to put your trades up in hotels,” says Robins.

He estimates the construction time for the larger homes would be halved to six months.

Once on site Robins and his team would be responsible to ensuring the steel frame structure is sited properly on the four points where it rests, whether that’s drilling a hole in rock or having concrete fittings made in soft ground. The cost of siting is additional and would start at $2,000 and go up depending on the difficulty.

One of the advantages, Robins says, of these homes is their “higher overall quality” because they are built with a steel frame that can stand up better in an earthquake.

He adds should a family want to expand their homes they can easily be achieved simply by adding other “units.”

The homes are both “green” and “smart” with features that include a green roof to help increase insulation and lessen energy consumption, uses reclaimed wood products, has a warm board in-floor heating system that runs at a lower temperature then regular in-floor heating and has an instantaneous hot water heater. At a touch of a switch it turns from natural gas to propane hot water heater for those areas where natural gas is not an option.

One of the “smart” components include heat and light regulation. A remote temperature and lighting adjustment allows the homeowner to alter the heat and lighting from their own computer at another location.

For more information go to www.preformconstruction.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 7th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Real Estate Related. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.