Prefab kit home comes together like Lego bricks

In 2017, Australian company Ecokit raised thousands of dollars on Indiegogo for a modular housing kit that enabled people to build sleek, modern homes in just three weeks. Two years later, that conceptual kit of parts has evolved into real, habitable homes. Ecokit houses are starting to pop up in Australia—their flat packed pieces rising into simple gabled forms.

Ecokit

Started by two sisters as an alternative to Australia’s increasingly unaffordable housing options, Ecokit claims its homes are faster and (relatively) cheaper to construct than a conventionally built house.

The kits come in two main styles: a 530-square-foot single-story home and a 645-square-foot two-bedroom model that also has a storage loft. The kits start at $104,000 and go up to $146,400 (this price doesn’t include installation or interior finishes), prices comparable to those of other affordable modern prefabs.

Ecokit

The houses include more than 4,000 CNC-milled parts that are loaded on pallets and dropped at the house site. These structural pieces have built-in joints that fit together and make construction relatively painless even for those who don’t build houses for a living.

“You simply assemble the big plywood blocks, just like an oversized lego bricks,” Ecokit co-founder Camilla Novotna told Designboom.

Ecokit

Chances are it’s a little more complicated than that, but the whole premise of Ecokit is to provide a kit home that can be constructed by anyone, anywhere, and without major machinery. So far, the timber clad homes are mostly popping up in Australia, but the company says its design can be tweaked for cold-weather living, too.