In the 1830s, carpenter H. Manning wanted to ensure that his son, who was moving to Australia, would have a comfortable place to live.  Australia was still a pretty obscure place in the early 19th century, so Manning was not sure what building materials would be available down under.  Manning constructed a house in modules that fit in the hull of a ship—the first prefab home!— and his son reassembled his house when he reached his new home.  The process was such a success that he built dozens of units to be shipped abroad.  The homes proved so sturdy that a few are still standing!

The invention of balloon-frame construction around the same time enabled the mass production of housing in the United States.  Balloon framing significantly reduced construction costs, as construction with thin framing members and machine-made nails did not require highly skilled carpenters.

Prefabrication hit the bigtime in 1908, when Sears, Roebuck and Co. introduced the kit house.  The house was delivered in pieces ordered from a catalogue.  It cost a third less than a conventional home, and only took a few months to construct on-site.  Sears sold about 100,000 kit homes.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefnoble/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In the 20th century, modern architects began to see prefabrication as a strategy to make quality design affordable for everyone.  Frank Lloyd Wright experimented with homes that could be constructed in pieces in a factory.  Halfway across the world in Germany, Walter Gropius designed prefabricated housing to solve post-WWI Germany’s housing shortage.

Some designs were far crazier.  Buckminster Fuller’s 1927 Dymaxion House design could be assembled and shipped in pieces, and incorporated a steel structure and sustainable elements.

In the second half of the century, prefabricated homes split into two distinct markets.  Manufactured homes, now regulated under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development building code (HUD Code), are a low-cost housing solution.  They do not conform to local building codes, are designed to be transportable, and usually lose value over time.  Modular homes offer a solution to producing high quality, permanent homes quickly and cost-effectively.  Factory fabrication also inherently reduces waste.  LivingHomes utilizes modular construction to produce homes faster, better, and cheaper than traditional construction.

Newport Beach LivingHome

Sources:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94119708

http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/repair/prefab-house1.htm