Published by Martha Danly under Green Building, Inside Design, Sustainability

Charlie Lazor is a polymath. That’s not name calling, but high praise for a man who brings insights from many disciplines to the modern prefab home.

Grounded in the approach of such brilliant thinkers and designers as Thomas Jefferson, Jean Prouvé, and Charles and Ray Eames, Charlie goes back to the original conception of prefab as both mindset and methodology for producing modern architecture in a more controlled and cost-effective way.

The term prefab carries many associations, not all of them positive. As Charlie looks at its negative connotations, he says, “Prefab has often been viewed as the doublewide trailer, the lowest common denominator in housing, which fails on design. On the opposite end of the spectrum, prefab is not necessarily buildable, as conceived by Gropius or Fuller, the exalted in modern architecture.”

But these challenges don’t hold Charlie Lazor back. His FlatPak home designs seek the middle way in prefab: producing dwellings with the potential to be elegant, yet buildable, sustainable, and affordable.

And this is where democracy enters the scene. Charlie’s ultimate goal is to use prefab design to make the modern house available to more people.

“Architects service only the crème de la crème” of homebuyers, Charlie muses. “The top two per cent of homes get all the design talent—and where does that leave the other 98%?” He compares formally architected homes to couture designs. Sure, they’re beautiful to look at, but they’re completely out of reach for most people. Instead, he wants to take a page out of the book of builder/developers, who adhere to a strict design-and-documentation process and mass produce homes at a reasonable cost. Charlie’s reasonable road draws from both extremes.

To forge the middle way, Charlie takes full responsibility for the end product by being involved from the concept stage through construction. Based on principles developed by French architect and designer Jean Prouvé, the FlatPak approach borrows manufacturing technology from industry and applies it to architecture. This allows an increase in quality and cost control, while maintaining aesthetics. The goal is to fuse art with industry.

Charlie’s production team creates each building in a controlled environment; FlatPak jigs and templates are crafted specifically for his building designs. He considers this creation process to be closer to furniture making than to current home construction methods. The goal is to simplify onsite construction and guarantee a more predictable end result, design-wise and cost-wise.

Focused on sustainability, FlatPak designs also consciously consider daylight, fresh air, and nature as part of the living environment. All building materials, energy systems, and finishes are selected with the individual buyer’s physical and psychological health in mind.

Ultimately, Charlie Lazor’s FlatPak home is a humanist project. It starts with the basic premise that good architecture and affordability should be available to everyone.

He seeks democracy in home design through a combination of manufacturing technology, the skills and training of his production and assembly teams, and, underneath it all, a flexible home design that can be applied over a generous field of preferences. Because everyone is different. And democracy is good at handling that.