The single-family home embodies the American dream and all the wonderful and awful things that come with it. It has been a symbol of westward expansion, industry, upward mobility, suburban sprawl, and family life. Among the many reasons to improve how we make houses, cost has become one of the most significant. Homeownership is out of reach for more people than ever and rent increases have outstripped wage growth over the past 20 years. Questionable quality is another reason. The single-family home is associated with flimsy construction and design that is boring at best, bad at worst.

This project is a double experiment. First, it is a test case in reducing cost. The approach is partly conventional—use inexpensive construction. Historically, this is the most common strategy within architecture, primarily because it is one of the few cost variables that architects can influence. In this case, houses are made of an off-the-shelf steel panel system that is common in industrial and agricultural buildings. A second, less conventional strategy further lowers cost: building multiple houses on a single-family lot.

The second part of the experiment is a form based approach to variation. Most modern architects who incorporated repetitive difference into their projects used a modular kit-of-parts strategy. A gridded frame where infill panels can be of many different materials and functions is an example—where form is consistent and materiality varies. This project inverts that relationship: material is consistent and form varies. The standard components are corrugated panels that come in straight or curved segments. The segments are typically assembled to make one of a handful of familiar forms—say, a Quonset hut or a rounded gable end. However, when the standard panels are reconfigured in new sequences, buildings with a wide range of unusual profiles can be made. They can be bumpy, lopsided, very tall, or even combine multiple shapes.