We spoke with the couple recently about the Dwell Home Design Invitational.

First, what got you interested in modern architecture?

Wieler: Initially, I wasn’t necessarily interested in “modern” architecture, but I was interested in a unique, appealing, well-designed home that I could be very comfortable in. The more I looked at architectural options, the more interested I became in modern architecture.

Tung: Maybe it was just growing up frequenting Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery that trained my aesthetic sensibilities in a “modern” direction. I like the “intentions” in contemporary homes, often minimalist and sometimes dissonant, dynamic and in harmony with their surroundings.

So what got you interested in prefab?

Wieler: Anxious to stop throwing our money away on rent, we began our search for a new home last spring. And we searched . . . and searched. All the houses were the same. We didn’t even like the ones we couldn’t afford. We were able to maintain our optimism until our extremely patient real estate agent, Dave Klarmann, told us that he’d never had a file so large on any previous client! We began to consider building our own home and foraged through those awful floor-plan magazines. At our wits’ end in Barnes & Noble, we happened across Dwell. We picked it up and began to flip through the pages when an ad for the book Prefab caught our eyes. “That’s what I want,” Ingrid said. Being the unabashed entrepreneurial type, I called up Dwell to find out how to get a cool prefab house. After reading the book and doing some research, we both decided that prefab was the way—the only way—we could find a home that would satisfy both our fiscal and aesthetic demands.

Soon after, when I realized what we were looking for didn’t exist, I felt there was a potential business oppor-tunity to create and sell this product. Building and marketing a modern, well-designed, prefabricated home nationally could have a tremendously positive impact on society—and be quite profitable if executed properly.

What are you most excited about with regards to the Dwell Home Design Invitational?

Tung: Our unbelievable luck to be able to work with Dwell, the architects, and the jury on this project—a dream come true.

Photo by Aya Brackett