I like your “rail houses” Freudian typo. In a sense, row houses are rail houses — row house density supports rail well.

Regarding aesthetics and mass-produced housing: It seems like the older row-houses have worn well in part because they were high-quality to begin with but also because they’ve been well-cared-for since then. Note, for example, that people typically cite Brooklyn ‘s and San Francisco’s townhouses rather than, say, Baltimore’s. I could imagine this extending to modern mass-produced housing too — if these buildings seem high-quality and are cared for well, they’ll be considered aesthetically pleasing, too.

As for the cost, I would hope that “affordable” new construction does not start at $290/sf, and bet that they will not cost as much in bulk… otherwise, it just reinforces how cool the new “apartment in a shipping container” is quoted at just over $100/sf.

Comparing current costs to those 10 years ago, that is pretty much a lost cause. Inflation alone would add about 3% per year (compounded), and in the past few years construction cost escalations have beat inflation by a long shot.

About a month ago I ate lunch on top of Rainier Square, and basically concluded that these look good as a prototype, and I would invite them into our communities. However, as with anything that can be mass produced, they would get old quickly if they were plopped down everywhere. (This is similar to my view of townhouses, I like the concept greatly, but stamp the same design 500 times and it gets old.)

Cost still seems to be a problem with this developer – they want bidding to start at $140,000 for the prototypes, that’s $290/sq ft for the smaller unit. If that’s even close to what it cost them to make, they’re wasting their time. Either that or they are planning to keep most of the savings as profit.

Compare: 10 years ago in the heart of Silicon Valley, during the dot-com boom; the builder of my two story, 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath townhouse was able to build for about $100/sq ft (not including land cost). They used pre-cut lumber and slab foundations to trim costs and speed construction. The units were all built to current CA earthquake standards, which means a lot of extra metal to tie it together (which is not done up here, even now).

I also wonder how possible it would be to make pre-fab apartments to go on top of existing one-story retail. It would be great if it were easy to do a cheapish retro-fit to add several apartments to our high-quality early-century retail spaces (e.g. along 45th in Wallingford).

This whole issue does seem relevant to transit, by the way, given the degree to which affordable density is a key driver of transit use.

Unfortunately this is not true. They are helpful in terms of reduced construction time, which can reduce carrying costs, but on a per square foot, fully installed basis they are basically similar to stick frame. Hopefully the cost wil come down as more manufacturers enter the market.

Another negative, from a financial perspective, is that the units need courtyards (no interior prefab hallways) and so the efficiency – in terms of area of leasable space to total space – is lower than stsickframe buildings. this would suggest use in zones on large sites, or in places with relatively cheaper land values.

Has anyone visited the unit on top of Ranier Square?

The units pictured in the Times article are actually very Bauhaus. If the architect could grasp and use the strengths of this design school they might actually make this a visual success.

If not, it’s just another pile of instant 1963 on the north slope of Queen Anne.