Daniel Libeskind Villa

The concept of prefabricated housing has been around for a number of years now. It is an attractive idea: get your house - Ikea-style! However, it has never really taken off because the prices are certainly not Ikea-esque. Plus, many such models are done by architects with a propensity to use copious amounts of glass. The combination of glass, steel and wood is undeniably alluring - if you have a large area of land to nestle the house in. After all, privacy is, well, highly prized. You do not want to have your neighbours peering at you over dinner, and drawing curtains over such an monumental expanse of glass somehow feels wrong.

All this is, of course, not an issue if you have upwards of 2 million euros to spend on a luxurious Daniel Libeskind masterpiece - a villa:

“Like a crystal growing from rock, a dramatic structure emerges from the ground. The Villa, Daniel Libeskind’s first signature series home, creates a new dialogue between contemporary living and a completely new experience of space. Built from premium materials, this German-made, sculptural living space meets the highest standards in design, craftsmanship and sustainability. It is unique at every turn, offering maximum insulation and durability, cutting-edge technologies and compliance with some of the toughest energy-saving standards across the world.” (Signature Series press release)

“Too often we celebrate great civic institutions… but actually architecture is how people live and how well they live. [This project is really] a total work of art… It’s not just designing a shell or something, or a shape that is iconic, but really creating an environment at every level.”

The villa design features the jagged edges and off-kilter shapes often found in his work. The idea was to “get away from the typical cubic forms, which result from a sort of tradeoff between architecture and production.” (New York Times)

Prefab may still be much more expensive than your regular cookie-cutter home, but offers you an architect’s vision, at a cost significantly less than directly employing the services of a starchitect like Daniel Libeskind - for your very own cookie cutter prefab home.