LivingHomes are modern well thought out alternatives to custom home building & design. While deemed as a "pre-fab" type of construction, these homes are not what you would expect.. they are geared toward sustainable building practices. LivingHomes are really top drawer types of projects with prices from $500K to over $1m, but for that you get a modern designed home by either Ray Kappe or David Hertz who are well-known architects from California. Personally I think the 2 models done by Kappe are more appealing for rural living as they have a chance of finding a site to "blend in" with... still it might be tough to get it into the Desert SW landscape and not look too "out there"
When we are facing a home building project that is going to be both expensive and of what seems like unending duration this modern "pre-fab" alternative looks appealing and IS appealing. Costs are currently higher than Steve Glen founder and CEO of LivingHomes would like but as orders and production ramp up, he says the homes should come down in price. Here is a link to an post in Land+Living with comments that are interesting. I'm still thinking that in very open country as we have in Southern Arizona, the height will make it hard to blend the design into the landscape.