Putting it together.

Except in architectural circles, prefabricated building has had a pretty poor press. The results spoke for themselves--even if the idea has always had something going for it as the recent spate of books on the topic underlines. Add to books this new site, Fabprefab, at www.fabprefab.com. This is the brainchild of Sydney trained, California-based prefab enthusiast and architectural scientist, Michael Sylvester. Fabprefab is strictly about Modernist prefabs and when you think of the concept of Prefab Tudorbethan or even Prefab Gothic, you understand why. The site has lots of examples, one or two of which are so clunky and bolted together that you wince. And too many of them are under development rather than for sale: Sylvester admits Modernist prefab is, 'more of a meme than a marketplace'. The site is very neatly designed with the navigation down the left-hand side. But beyond that things are a tad chaotic--classic signs of a one-person site which has got too big to manage on an occasional basis. There is no short answer to this common website problem--except shipping in more staff. I joined up for the Fabprefab newsletter. A month later it hasn't arrived.