Modular homes are becoming less standardized and more personal.The cut in construction deadlines (not so much in prices) fuels demand.“Interest and demand is growing, but this is just the beginning.We already noticed a significant pull back in 2017 and, later, with the pandemic, everything has skyrocketed ”.The architect Álex Lezcano tells how modular houses, little by little, are gaining ground over brick constructions.Among its advantages, it highlights "efficiency, insulation, adaptability and cutting not so much in prices as in construction time".Although there is no specific registry and the licenses depend on each municipality, the administrations recognize that more and more Aragonese are betting on prefabricated houses.“We prefer to call them 'manufactured houses' because they are no longer a model that is made in series, but rather more personalized and less standardized houses.Each one adapts to an urban circumstance: some can be installed on plots, but others have to fit, for example, between two narrow dividing walls”, explains Lezcano, at the head of Cronotopos, an architecture studio where they design and build these modular houses."We design them 'ad hoc' with the clients, then we 'cut them apart', all their elements are manufactured and we take them to the site where they are assembled".Meanwhile, it has been possible to carry out the foundations of the house, with which construction times are drastically reduced, up to 50%.If the usual thing is that it takes about fourteen months to obtain the keys of a chalet, in these cases it would not be more than seven.Regarding the foundation, the type of land available must be taken into account: ideally, it should be sufficiently flat and there is no need to resort to fillers that would make the project significantly more expensive.But, what requirements are needed to make a manufactured home?In the first place, have a plot and that it be developable.It is also necessary to have all the urban specificities related to licenses, procedures, landscaping requirements... It seems easy to see the walls fly with a crane, but behind that image there are endless municipal ordinances (acoustic, thermal, supply intake , etc.) that must be fulfilled.The most common structures of these houses are made with concrete, steel (steel framing) or wood, although the latter two are more 'ecofriendly' and more sustainable due to their energy self-sufficiency and because they hardly generate waste such as rubble and gravel that they do produce the concrete.Apart from the skeleton, later, the future resident can choose any finish on the outside and also decide on the distribution and interior qualities.One of the biggest concerns of those interested in this type of housing is the price and, as in all areas, it is advisable to ask for and compare budgets.There are companies that have closed catalogs of buildings, which is usually cheaper than a personalized house.Thus, depending on the quality of the materials used and the finishes, the cost per square meter can range between 1,000 and 1,500 euros, that is, in the most standardized cases, a modular home could be purchased for just over 80,000 euros. .“The issue of prices is one of the biggest falsehoods… It is often thought that a prefabricated house is the same as a cheap house, but it is not.A manufactured house is equal to an efficient house, better, faster, but not cheaper.Nor more expensive.It is true that time is money and if they give you a product seven months in advance, that is what you save on rent”, comment the builders, who also explain that the profile of the client is usually that of a young married couple, between 35 and 40 years old, normally without children but with a stable job.Swimming pools made with containers.Are you interested?Ask me.pic.twitter.com/oL9bK0A354Are they all advantages?Some experts are not convinced by this type of construction.The architect Alberto Sánchez, without going any further, is suspicious of these houses because "they do not respect the values ​​of the built environment"."They are proliferating in many small rural municipalities, altering the landscape and promoting dispersed urbanization that is contrary to the traditional model of the town in Aragon, which used to be very compact."For the specialist in Heritage, prefabricated houses "create a space equivalent to scattered American urbanizations, with no social interaction and very dependent on the car", evidencing the traditional struggle between the chalet and the closed neighborhood block.To date, this type of construction had been related to mini-flats and micro-dwellings, but after covid it has been shown that it does not have to be that way.“After the pandemic, people realized that they needed a garden and large spaces.Two trends were highlighted that speak of a new way of living and of the interests of society: creating smaller modular homes to leave space for the garden and recovering and repopulating old town houses, many of the grandparents or great-grandparents who had remained almost forgotten”, says Lezcano, with projects of this type underway in Ainzón, Borja, Villafeliche, Uncastillo and a host of other towns.On a larger scale and already at a regional level, sources from the Department of Housing of the DGA explain that the administrations are also embracing this philosophy, which they even plan to adopt in some of their star projects such as the residence for young people on Pirineos de Zaragoza avenue .This same Tuesday the table 'New models of housing and urban space' was held, where the industrialization of construction was discussed in order to obtain more competitive prices and also force the implementation of the 'passiv haus', a trend pursued by the minimum energy expenditure in houses through materials and insulation that make heating in winter and air conditioning in summer almost unnecessary.Among other projects that are being considered with these new and more efficient construction models (with industrially produced prefabricated concrete) are plans for new accommodation in the Expo area and in the Buen Pastor space.In the 1990s, Japan launched a revolutionary idea into the world: cheap, transportable and low-consumption houses.The most expensive ones did not exceed 50,000 euros and the key was to take advantage of every inch: as in a caravan, the bunk was above the laundry room and beyond it a small bathroom.They were called 'tiny houses' -something like tiny houses- and the surprising thing is that they also took root in the United States and Europe, especially after the 2008 crisis when they appeared as an option in the face of land scarcity and, above all, money.“Initially, these constructions were focused on as second homes, such as country or mountain houses, but later orders began to be received for first homes as well,” they explain.The tiny houses did not usually exceed 40 square meters and were the answer to the rise in brick prices, so experiments soon began with wood, steel, PVC... Even with containers, an area in which Aragón was quite a pioneer when opening the Remolinos Enlatamus Museum.With the current heat wave, an idea of ​​making pools with this type of shipping container has also been quite successful.© HERALDO DE ARAGON EDITORA, SLU Telephone 976 765 000 / - Pº.Independencia, 29, 50001 Zaragoza - CIF: B99288763 - Registered in the Mercantile Registry of Zaragoza in Volume 3796, Book 0, Folio 177, Section 8, Sheet Z-50564 Any reproduction without written permission from the company is prohibited for the purposes of the article 32.1, second paragraph, of the Intellectual Property Law