As home buyers continue to demand and expect high levels of customization and personalization, builders are pinched for finding solutions that can deliver on a volume basis. KB Home has a handle on a great solution: flex space.
A flex space, compliments of a movable wall in the Greenbuild KB Home ProjeKt, was on display at the Greenbuild Conference and Exhibition in October. The movable wall in this home offers features way beyond a typical wall. It housed a television, speakers, and all of the wiring to serve as an entertainment center, or it could be flipped to function as a video conference screen.
This flex space and functionality will take over housing in the future. As the demand for affordability becomes a priority—and as we have new technologies that make movable walls not only feasible, but practical—space can be designed in more efficient ways. The efficiency could mean reducing floor plan size by an entire room, says Jacob Atalla, vice president of sustainability at KB Home.
In this video, Joe Wheeler, co-director, Center for Design Research, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, shows the functionality of the movable wall and how it transforms the space in this project.
Tom Silk, senior vice president of marketing and communications at KB Home, calls it a “hybrid home” design. The architect on the Greenbuild KB Home ProjeKt, Manny Gonzalez of KTGY, commented that, “these flexible cartridges allow the industry to evolve; we won’t need to build all the rooms that we have typically constructed in the past. New homes will leave a smaller carbon footprint.”
Dan Bridleman, senior vice president, sustainability, technology, and strategic sourcing at KB Home, is already planning how to incorporate movable walls into the company’s floor plans.
More on the Greenbuild KB Home ProjeKt and the innovation behind it is available at www.builderonline.com/kbhomeprojekt.
