">HomeOwnerNut

Let me guess: I say the words “pre-fab housing” and you turn up your nose and wince. Never mind if the home is green, solid and attractive; if it comes shipped in a box, you’re not going to live in it. In Europe and Asia, meanwhile, the economics of fossil fuels has driven the slow, steady development of compact homes that tread lightly on the environment.

Contain your enthusiasm

Photo by ConHouse

Europe’s ConHouse has remade the container unit precisely for housing and stacked two together for a split-level pre-fab home. Home buyers can assemble their plans from a menu of options. Perfect exterior designs, too, if you like living in what looks like an ice cream parlor or soft-drink advertisement. Check it out for yourself at ConHouse.

Butterfly architecture

Photo by Home & House Design

Thai architecture students have formed an organization, TYIN Tegnestue, to produce these wood pre-fab houses. Clad with harvested Thai bamboo, these eco-centric homes capture rain water through the flip-up roof that doubles as a ventilation system. The homes are raised up on legs and set on foundations manufactured of recycled tires. You may not take to it, but it’s an ultra green home design.

Micro-manage your home

Photo by Inhabitat

Then, there’s Micro Compact Home, Ltd (m-ch), with this off-the-grid, all-electric eHome powered by photovoltaic solar panels and a vertical axis wind generator. There’s room for two, they say. For EUR 38,000, the company will make yours (delivery and installation extra). Visit m-ch for the details.

Samantha Schoech of Sunset Magazine implores would-be pre-fab buyers to ask themselves if they love the layout enough to live in it, whether the lot or subdivision will accommodate the dwelling and – last and most importantly – that they’re sure the people who ship their order have made houses before.

From humble origins, the youngsters who lived in the homes pictured below grew into musical legends. Many singer-songwriters, like Bruce Springsteen, have always sung about their hometown and upbringing. Some weave adolescent stories into the architectures of their discography.

Fans make pilgrimages to the homes of their heroes’ beginnings; others stand outside the locked gates of mansions where the singers live today. These homes show the environment from which these megastars found their voice.

I ain’t gonna act politically correct

Photo by Shania Twain Biography

Brick and siding is what you think of in urban designs, but floor-level of this house in Timmins, Ontario, is the childhood home of a country singer. Born Eileen Regina Edwards, Shania Twain shared a basement room with her sister here.

There’s a red house over yonder

Photo by The Seattle Times

But you won’t find it anymore. In this 900-square-foot house in Seattle, a 13-year-old Jimi Hendrix began playing guitar after seeing Elvis Presley perform. Despite an effort by a local developer to save the home, it was razed in 2009. Read more about it in The Seattle Times.

The kid is not my son

Photo by Fashion 121

The flowers are for the eighth of ten children who were packed into this Gary, Indiana home.  Michael, born August 29, 1958, and the other Jacksons lived here until they were signed by Motown and moved to Los Angeles in 1968.

Sleeping in that old abandoned beach house

Photo by The Star Ledger

Along the Jersey shore, houses with cottage designs were inexpensive to rent in the mid 1970s. In this house, at 7 1/2 W. End Ct. Long Branch, Springsteen wrote his fabled songs, Born to Run, Thunder Road and Backstreets. He wasn’t born here, but his legend was.

Like a child, you whisper softly to me

Photo by Fox News

A half hour outside Detroit, you’ll find this two-story, colonial-style Rochester Hills home that Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone shared with five siblings and her parents.  Madonna’s mother died from cancer in 1963 when the future singer was only 5 years old.

Come back, baby, I wanna play house with you

Photo by Our Pratville

This two-room shack was built in 1934 in Tupelo, Mississippi by Vernon Presley. His wife Gladys gave birth to twins on January 8, 1935, but only Elvis survived.

How did your childhood home and environment influence you?