Cottage to Cutting-edge: Prefabricated Homes in New Zealand
Meridian First Light House, designed by Victoria University students. First Kiwi bach powered entirely by the sun’s rays.
The exhibition will cover 200 years of prefab history, feature full-scale contemporary housing exhibits and provocative innovative housing for the future. It also surveys the prefab in a contemporary setting and explores its possibilities for the future. That future is a world away from the standardised, mass-produced versions of the past. Emergent digital fabrication technology is changing the design process and means the new prefab is individual and it’s increasingly ‘green’.
Within the exhibition space, there will feature a scale model of the prefabricated First Light House, the Victoria University student project which came third in the prestigious US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon competition this year. Around this net zero energy dwelling the audience will be invited to consider if prefabrication provides the answers to sustainable building and whether it will help with a response to natural disasters.
