Prefab green home builder to close shop
Michelle Kaufmann Designs, a company formed to sell pre-built green homes, is shutting down, a victim of deflated housing prices and the credit industry meltdown.
The Oakland, California-based company installed about 40 energy-efficient single-family homes that were prefabricated in a factory near Seattle. The company had hundreds more that were in the planning stages but it was unable to deliver them, in part because of the difficulty of financing new construction. "We have always known that to pull off our mission, it requires scale. We always believed it would be our company to do the scaling. We were well on our way to do so. However, in this current economic climate, scaling for a small company has proven to be difficult," wrote Kaufmann on the company blog o
n Wednesday. 
A prefab green building with integrated solar panels from Michelle Kaufmann Designs.
(Credit: James Watts)
In response to a query, Kaufmann said the company is closing but the timing has not yet been settled.
She said she was hopeful that she will be able to continue working on sustainable home designs. "The underlying concept works. Healthy, efficient and well-designed homes need to be accessible for all," she wrote.
There are a number of green businesses founded in the past five years that are
struggling in the economic downturn. Energy related investments have gone down sharply, while companies in the housing sector, like Michelle Kaufmann Designs, are vulnerable to the real estate crash.
GREEN Design Marflex Building Solutions
More than 250 architects from the American housing buildings will be introduced to new products from Green Building Solutions Marflex when they gather in Seattle on September 14 for Residential Architect’s Reinvention 2009.
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New and better Drain & Dry drainage board created by converting ECOSE Technology-based bio-polymer material into an inert mineral wool strands bond together, eliminating formaldehyde and phenols found in traditional binders. Shockwave and Geo-Matt Plus drainage board is made from 100% post-consumer product recycling.
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Since 1984, Marflex Building Solutions has a mission to ensure the safest, driest possible to create the best environment in the world and in the classroom building envelope under a system
