- The home of the future.

It's been a dream for decades but can we build one

right here in Austin, Texas.

The Verge and Curbed have partnered to bring this dream

of the home of the future to life.

I'm Grant Imahara and our goal is to construct

a house that combines cutting edge technology

with innovative design.

We wanna see if some of the latest smart home systems

and high-efficiency design can create

a more secure and convenient environment.

and actually improve our daily living.

How do we build this Home Of The Future?

Well, it all begins in the factory.

(eeeeing of grinder)

In east Texas construction company, evolution,

builds roughly 85% of its houses inside this

265,000 square foot warehouse.

Each year they complete about 50 homes.

These fully constructed modular units can be finished

in 1/3 of the time it takes to build a house onsite.

(crackling of welder) (eeeeing of grinder)

(baarrring of drill)

The power of prefabs or prefabricated homes

is that they can be mass produced

without compromising quality of design

and structural stability.

The assembly line construction begins

with pouring the concrete floor

and once the slab's been laid down cranes and hoists

pick them up and take them to the line.

But the scale of this assembly line

is bigger than most.

Instead of cars, it's houses.

How long's it take from when a slab comes in

to the finish line?

- We have 17 stations.

If we were doing one box a day you could have

a complete box in anywhere from five to six days.

- [Grant] (chuckling) wow.

The house is assembled as it rolls

down the line on a track.

The walls are installed on top

then wiring and plumbing.

It goes from station-to-station,

to sheet rock, the top is placed on,

until there you have it, a complete unit.

Technically Luna House is a prefabricated home.

For me at least when I first heard about

prefabricated homes I have this idea

that they are cheap or low quality.

Where do you think that that comes from?

- I think a lot of it comes from certainly

post-World War II era and the association as well

with prefab with modular housing

which we also associate with the mobile home.

So you have that kind of connection in many peoples minds

even in so far as a lot of prefab construction

is actually quite high-end.

- [Grant] This is Michelle Addington,

the Dean, of The University of Texas

at Austin School of Architecture.

- The opportunity to have much more precise control

over manufacturing in particular is what enables

the greater quality.

And so by going factory-built you have

an opportunity not only for higher quality control

but the opportunity to use much higher-end materials

because they can be protected in the factory

in a way that they're not gonna be

as protected on a home building site.

- [Grant] The downside is that you can't deviate

from the design once you begin.

So, you better be sure this is what you want.

Our Luna House has three bedrooms and is 60 feet long,

and, that's not changing.

And because the factory is a giant assembly line

a problem with one house can delay

all the other projects behind it.

In fact, our original house was delayed so long

that we needed to switch to a house further along the line.

But even with delays like these the total amount of time

from blueprint approval to completion

is around six months on average

where as a typical on-site construction

could've taken up to a year.

- Architects have actually been trying

to accomplish some level of factory-built housing

for a hundred years and so it's gained some traction

and some popularity in the last decade

with the increasing popularity of design.

I think in a general level that happens with Apple,

it happens in the

popular press-- - In everyday life.

- In everyday life and so I think that that's

kind of transmitted over to architecture as well.

- [Grant] Architect, Chris Krager, is the founder

of Ma Modular and is the designer

of the house we're building.

We're here at his home.

- [Chris] Our business was founded with a primary goal

of making modern, that kind of architecture,

financially accessible.

- [Grant] The design we're building is called,

The Luna House floor plan made of three modular pieces.

Modular design means these units can be configured

in multiple arrangements.

They can even be stacked to create multiple floors.

You can think of them like big Lego blocks

that an architect can use to create

the best design for the needs of the homeowner.

Our house is composed of three main pieces.

One large module that includes one bedroom,

kitchen and living room and a smaller module

that has two bedrooms connected by a bathroom

and a third module for the entryway

that acts as a connection for the other two.

- [Chris] We're working with a framework

that I think is amenable to open-floor plans,

lots of windows and so I think it is very modern-friendly.

You also get to choose all your fixtures

and finishes, flooring.

There's definitely adequate room for customization

with the finish in the house.

- I gotta say, I knew that it was modular construction

but it really didn't feel like it.

- That is our goal with the design for it to feel,

not just like not a modular house,

but to feel like an architect-designed house.

- If you were to drive on this block you'd say,

well I think an architect designed that

so it automatically ups its cache.

- [Grant] But there's still a lot of hurdles

before you can really think of this kind of construction

as being, the future of home building.

- When you deal with something that's premanufactured

there's a tremendous amount of upfront cost

in setting up that type of manufacturing

particularly if you wanna get the economies of scale

of building large.

If we think about single family homes

there is very little upfront investment.

You can basically build in real-time

in terms of procurement of materials.

So the costs are incremental from that standpoint.

- [Grant] While we wait to see

what the future will hold for factory-built homes

our home has already been placed on the ground.

Right now though, it's still just a shell.

Over the next few months we'll work to finish off

everything inside of the home, create our own

power generation and storage and fill it

with the latest connected technology

for comfort and convenience.

It'll be hard work, but in the end

we'll get a glimpse into what it means

to actually live inside the home of the future.

Thank you so much for watching.

Now I'm sitting here in our home of the future

but I'm curious to know what you think you need

in your home of the future?

Let us know in the comments below

and we'll see ya next week with a new episode.