Prefab North Van laneway home a prototype for small-space living

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There are two schools of thought on laneway-home design: mimic the style of the main house or do something completely different. These days, Curtis Krahn leans to the second.

“We don’t need to create a little mini-me,” says Krahn, founding principal of Synthesis Design. Bylaws, lot sizes and existing architecture create constraints, he says – and you risk forcing a style that doesn’t make sense for the space if you go that route.

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His company’s East 4th laneway project in North Vancouver is a case study in the opposite: a minimalist modern structure sharing a lot with a character home.

The laneway house was the first built of the company’s now-signature prefabricated home product, the Modcube. “It’s quite modern, quite simple and complements a variety of styles, rather than competing,” says Krahn.

Though several have now been built, Modcube was a long time coming. When Krahn founded his firm back in 1994, he fully intended to focus on modular and innovative housing. But demand for this type of offering wasn’t there, at least not yet. So, he went on to create a successful custom home and residential renovation business. Over time, the market caught up, and Synthesis launched the Modcube concept in 2019, aiming to fill a growing niche of affordable, pre-fabricated laneway structures.

By this point, the company had already designed a slew of custom laneway and small homes – and started seeing common threads. “We thought, rather than doing all of these custom, since we know exactly what everybody wants, we’re going to design the perfect floor plan and prefab it,” Krahn says.

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They started with one model, now known as Plan’ A.’ Since then, iterations have multiplied up to ‘G,’ adding flexibility in footprint, esthetic, square footage, floor plan and other customizable traits. But all have one thing in common: they can be built mostly offsite and speedily snapped together on the ground. This reduces not only building costs, but waste and emissions as well, while cutting construction time by around 30 per cent.

“We’re not locked into any one specific prefab company,” adds Krahn. Nor does the contractor need special skills to build a Modcube: “They can do the prep work, dig the hole and put the foundation in, and while they’re doing that, the prefabrication is happening offsite.” By the time the foundation is done, the structure is usually ready to go.

The East 4th laneway home was proof of concept. Synthesis had purchased the 50-foot-wide East Van lot with the goal of building and showcasing its first Modcube. “We got to build the design exactly the way we had intended,” Krahn says. “It’s the quintessential two-level, two-bathroom, two-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot laneway home.”

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It’s also green-built to a Step Code 3 standard for energy efficiency, which isn’t easy to achieve in a small structure. Layers of insulation and “outsulation” help to tightly seal the envelope, working in tandem with a heat-recovery ventilation system. A green roof further regulates the structural temperatures, while attracting pollinators, and a cedar arbour partially shades a wraparound patio accessible from an upstairs bedroom. True to name, the home’s exterior form is a modified cube, clad in a mix of sustainable, non-combustible cement panelling and cedar siding – giving it a modern yet organic feel.

Inside, the home has an airy feel, despite the small footprint. “It was very important for us to design a space that felt bigger than it actually was,” says Krahn.

Light-toned finishes and an open-plan layout on the main floor help achieve this goal. Design choices are also geared to creating an elevated and stylish feel, uncommon in prefabricated homes, says Synthesis senior interior designer Julie Lepper. “Just because it’s modular doesn’t mean that it has to be basic or spec-y,” says Lepper.

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Forgoing a galley-style kitchen often favoured in small spaces, the design team went with an L-shaped configuration, and a matching L-shaped island. Also breaking with conventional wisdom, which dictates taking cabinets to the ceiling, Lepper left a quarter-inch “reveal line” between the cabinet tops and a surrounding bulkhead. This saved millworker time spent scribing edges to the ceiling contour, and hence budget, she notes. But it was also a deliberate design choice to subtly mirror the look of the cabinet drawers’ negative-space finger pulls.

Luxury vinyl flooring (Karndean Korlok in Washed Butternut) runs through all of the home’s spaces, including bathrooms, in a durable and waterproof finish that closely resembles oak.

Dual-tone white-and-oak cabinetry adds some visual drama, while a backsplash in white hexagonal porcelain tile brings in some sheen – plus a subtle nod to the hex-shaped Modcube logo. Tiling also runs over the corner to frame a window that looks out to the lane. “The window and the sink having a relationship so you can look outside while you do dishes; that was definitely a design choice,” says Lepper.

As was orienting most of the home’s sightlines toward the back alley, with the aim of creating a neighbourhood feel, says Krahn: “The goal is to have a whole bunch of these [homes] up and down the lane, so the neighbour-friendly atmosphere is really important.” One sign they succeeded? Around 400 people came to the open house. And the home has been rented ever since.

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