Think of pre-designed panels like assorted legos, ready for your creativity and imagination to put together something great. 

Sometimes called “pre-designed components”, these are sections of building envelope that have already taken into account the structural and performance layers of the wall, floor, or roof section, the size of the panel (including height, width, and depth), and the location of windows, doors, stairs, and other interruptions to the building envelope.  As with legos, there are a finite number of pieces available, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t let your imagination run wild with how to put them together, as long as they all “fit”.

Imagine you’re going skiing on a cold day, and you want to put together an outfit that will keep you warm throughout the day.  Pre-designed components are like giving you several options for your outfit that will all work to keep you warm, while giving you the option to pick and choose which pants, jacket, etc. will fit your style on a given day.  You’d get several sets of clothing choices for each part of your body, appropriate to your size: socks and boots for your feet, long underwear and ski pants for your legs), an underlayer, mid-layer, and goretex jacket for your torso, a wool cap and helmet for your head, and liners and gloves for your hands.  All you have to do is make some choices and put the clothing on!

Pre-designed components are one of the newest innovations in prefab building today, so not surprisingly, the choices of where to get such a solution in North America are slim. 

In fact, only a handful of companies that offer such a solution exist, and there’s only one that offers a foam-free, super-insulated, high performance solution – B Public Prefab, out of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Born out of a collaboration with one of North America’s leading Passive House architecture firms, B Public is a woman-led organization that is starting to make waves in the high performance building industry, and you’ll be happy to know that Collective Carpentry is the exclusive manufacturer for their pre-designed components.  Get in touch with us to learn more about how pre-designed components from B Public can inform your design.

As with building with lego blocks, building with pre-designed components requires a design approach that considers the sizes and configuration possibilities of the pieces.  While pre-designed components can be customized, the excessive customization of a pre-designed component renders it no longer pre-designed, and ultimately dictates that the project should probably use a custom approach.  Early consideration of this option is key to a project’s success.

Pre-designed components are ideal for developing modern home designs, multifamily developments, and institutional and commercial structures.