The easiest way to understand the concept of a customized prefabricated house is to compare its production to that of a car with options. Both are factory-built and delivered to the customer with the requested add-
ons. kOnyk’s up!house wholly embraces the automotive analogy with a project that incorporates not only fac-tory production but power windows and a moon roof. The up!house would be available to the customer online, delivered onsite by the next day, and assembled within hours—complete with that new-house smell.

The up!house expresses its “prefabricatedness” with a double cantilever system that keeps the house up—and costs down—by minimizing the onsite foundation work. This is how the system works: Acting as a balance beam from a center support, the weight of one side is counterbalanced by the weight of the other, not unlike a seesaw. When completely assembled, this lightweight steel structure box/beam acts like an inhabitable Vierendeel truss. The system allows the entire house to be supported by two reinforced-concrete walls on spread footings. These footings would be the only elements constructed onsite. The up!house employs an energy-efficient dual-envelope design and a steel unibody construction chassis. Its exterior consists of three-inch-thick, polystyrene core ABS-insulated sandwich panels and twin-wall polycarbonate walls.