When Plant Prefab was founded in 2016, we believed we had a national opportunity to create a radically more efficient way to build high-quality, well-designed, sustainable housing. And we wanted to do it in a way that provided value to both people and the planet.

Here’s how we’ve brought that dream to fruition, and how we’re upholding our commitment to social and environmental responsibility through our transition to multi-unit housing. 

Custom single-family home designed by Ray Kappe, FAIA and fabricated in our Rialto, California factory

Reimagining the Possibilities of Factory-Built Housing 

Plant Prefab was launched as an offshoot of LivingHomes, the design studio we founded in 2006 to focus solely on residential design for prefabricated construction. Having worked with ten different factories, we understood the limitations of conventional modular construction and set out to build a better process with more flexible building blocks. 

We aligned with visionary architects and leveraged advanced digital modeling to develop configurable components and engineering-driven processes that allowed us to accommodate complex architectural details and bespoke finishes. The homes we produced won awards for design, sustainability, and construction innovation, shattering long-standing stereotypes of prefab construction and redefining the possibilities of factory-built housing. 

Plant Prefab virtual model of one of 33 single-family homes fabricated in our Rialto, California factory for a new community in Olympic Valley, California

Building a Scalable Solution

While we are very proud of these accomplishments, we have always acknowledged that bespoke single-family projects would not allow us to realize our greater vision. We know that advancing widespread adoption of prefabrication techniques – bringing the efficiency, quality, sustainability, and safety benefits of factory production to all segments of the housing market – requires speed and scale. 

But how do you mass produce this kind of product? Thankfully, that’s the exact challenge we solve every day in our virtual design and construction process: Collaborating with project architects to design from standardized components that can be efficiently produced in our factory. 

In 2020 we began laying the groundwork for an automated facility that would give us both the capacity and velocity required to scale our operations, and in 2022 we broke ground on a 270,000-square-foot factory in Tejon Ranch, California. Opening this month, the new factory will utilize instructions from our digital modeling process to mass produce panelized components that can be shipped directly to jobsites for on-site finish, or assembled into volumetric modules and outfitted with finishes right in our factory.

Brooks + Scarpa rendering of an affordable supportive housing development designed by Brooks + Scarpa for fabrication at Plant Prefab

Doing the Most Good 

Our legacy of bespoke home production is one that we are very proud of, as it was the catalyst for our innovation and the proving grounds for our virtual design and construction process. It also set the standard of quality inherent in our finished product. But as we look towards our future – and our founding vision to advance the residential construction industry with a radically more efficient way to build high-quality, well-designed, sustainable housing – we are compelled to focus our efforts on the types of high-volume projects that are most needed to address the nation’s housing shortage. 

Capable of producing three to five million gross square feet of housing volume each year, our Tejon Ranch factory will help us materially impact housing production in our home state of California and other Western states. We are excited to take on this challenge, determined to continue driving innovation in the residential construction industry, and proud that we are growing our business in a way that strengthens our commitment to social and environmental responsibility.