Luxury homebuyers in Europe have long sung the praises of HUF HAUS, a 100-year-old German company that specializes in designing and building striking homes that follow the Bauhaus philosophy of open-floor plan living. Indeed, the homes have achieved such cult-like status in Great Britain that there’s even a HUF HAUS owner’s club.
Now, through an Ohio-based affiliate, dotGreen, Inc., HUF HAUS is finally branching out in the U.S. market.
“Despite our name, our focus is not primarily to be green, but to deliver immaculate quality and exceptional design,” says Alexander Kolbe, president of dotGreen. “The way in which Huf houses are designed, with such a dominant use of glass, means that we have always been aware of energy challenges. So, for us, the green elements have always been a very large part of what we do.”
Aside from their sleek and soothing designs, what sets a HUF house apart, especially from other high-end homes, is that they are first assembled in a factory before they are erected at the building site.
“So, yes, we are technically a pre-fab home, but beyond that there’s no comparison with what Americans typically think of as a pre-fab home,” says Kolbe.
Consider, for instance, that walls in a HUF house are 11-inches thick and that ceilings are made of solid concrete panels, which provides a high degree of thermal capacity along with maximum soundproofing. The two-inch thick insulated glass that is used in many of the exterior walls is triple glazed and its cavities filled with argon gas to create state-of-the-art insulation. In addition to giving HUF HAUS the ultimate in engineering control over its product, manufacturing the homes offsite prevents building materials from being compromised and degraded by sun, rain, mud and other elements. And, in the end, it also speeds up the building process.
“It’s much, much faster than traditional construction methods,” says Kolbe. “After the home is manufactured at the factory it can be assembled onsite in one to two weeks. Then it takes another two or three months to complete the interior finishes.”
And don’t think that the modular, pre-fab nature of a HUF house restricts would-be owners from adding any number of custom features. One recent HUF HAUS client had his home designed around a large tree on his property. Another home, in France, was designed with its own airplane hangar. And a HUF house built at an altitude of 8,500-feet in the Swiss Alps was designed to have its own avalanche retaining wall.
Prices begin at $1.5 million. For more information and a gallery of HUF HAUS designs, please visit www.dotgreenusa.com
