Prefabricated house with connecting architect or without architectural planning?

Hello everyone,

we are currently planning how and with whom we want to build a house. The fact is, we will not be contributing any personal work ourselves.

We have already had a conversation with an architect, who quickly brought us back down to earth regarding our budget and expectations. We want to spend a maximum of €500k including everything.

I would now like to take a closer look at the prefab house sector, as I suspect you get more value for your money there.

After a conversation today with Schwörerhaus, I was told that the design of the house could be done by a so-called "liaison architect." However, this person acts on their own account. The advantage would be that the architect knows Schwörerhaus’s possibilities well and can directly incorporate them into the planning.

How is it with other prefab house providers? Is architect planning never included in the package from the beginning?

As I understand it, that's the be-all and end-all when building a house.

At Schwörerhaus we also had what you call a connection architect, but he was actually unnecessary or didn’t advise us sufficiently regarding the exterior appearance, and so in my opinion we ended up with too many different window formats in hindsight.

However, he accompanied us through every phase until moving in.

Even when I look at the Schwörerhaus houses built privately afterwards, I don’t find them visually impressive.

But what Schwörerhaus definitely can do is build with quality and every defect was taken care of without any ifs or buts.

Alternatively, try contacting Weberhaus.

I would now like to take a closer look at the prefab house site, as I suspect you get more for your money there.

No, it is also equally priced with comparable equipment. If one is not religiously biased, i.e. does not consider the wall construction (which stone, with or without ETICS) important for the planet’s rotation direction, then in my opinion other variants are also adequate, and a prefab house builder in this sense is a contractor like any other.

Some architects see it this way too, so that "individual designs" (even by architects chosen by the client) are no longer uncommon.

With Schwörerhaus we also had what you call a connection architect,

He at least managed that I do not immediately recognize the Schwörerhaus origin from your house.

Sounds to me almost as if the "connection architect" is known elsewhere as the responsible "construction consultant"? Or does he do something beyond that?

Saving money with prefab houses ... probably not.

He submitted the building application in the acknowledgment procedure, the tenders for the earthworks including the base slab, and 2 deviations from the development plan to the municipal council.

In my impression, one should not expect too much from an architect working for a prefabricated house manufacturer in terms of aesthetics. The floor plan resembles a labyrinth. Windows are simply holes in the wall wherever they fit. There is no trace of a modular grid or any window dimension being a multiple of the smallest element. It can happen that three window formats with different sill heights appear on a single wall side, or that all kinds of shading types are mixed, ranging from none to blinds and slats. Metal gate with wooden front door and plastic windows in all imaginable shades are added. The attached garage has a different ground level than the house, and so on. In many customer houses (see references of the prefabricated house manufacturers), the proportions simply do not match in my opinion.

If it is to be aesthetically pleasing, one will probably not get around a freelance architect. However, that in turn is no guarantee that it will look aesthetically pleasing afterwards.