Episode 24 - Alexander Kolbe, evoDOMUS
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Transcript
Prefab Review
Hi, my name is Michael Frank and this is The Prefab Pod presented by Prefab Review where we interview leading people and companies in the prefab housing industry. Today, we're speaking with Alexander Kolbe of evoDOMUS, an architecture firm located in the middle of the country. But that builds beautiful modular homes around the country and the world. Alex, thanks for being with us.
Alexander Kolbe - evoDOMUS
Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, let me just quickly jump in and correct you on one detail. We're not an architecture firm per se, we're a design-build company. We design our own homes. I can explain that more in detail if you want, with of course a background in architecture. But yeah, we're not an architecture firm.
Prefab Review
Perfect. Okay, that is an important place to start. So I guess why don't we with your background and to start can you just tell me a little bit about how and why you started evoDOMUS
evoDOMUS
Sure. So by training I'm an architect. I had an architecture firm in Germany for 12 years or so and then fate happened and we moved to England. I continued my architecture career in England for 5 years and I'm still to this day a licensed architect and member of the Royal Institute of British Architects in England. Well what happened is in 2009 after the Lehman Crisis basically wiped out our existence in England, we decided, my wife is from Ohio, so we decided to go to Ohio and be closer to her family. We came over here in 2009 and that was a tough phase for us. It's not a good feeling to just lose your existence in a country and then move in your mid-late 40s to the United States and start all over.
Prefab Review
Yeah, were you working in banking?
evoDOMUS
I had an architecture firm in England. Sorry for confusion.
Prefab Review
Ah, yeah I was a little confused because you said you said you were an architect by training but the banking crisis made England not doable from a living standpoint?
evoDOMUS
Yes, because England at that point had a very overheated speculation bubble in residential homes and when this happened and people lost a lot of money in stocks and stuff, everything came to a screeching halt.
Prefab Review
I see. So there was no new construction happening on the residential side?
evoDOMUS
It was for us. We were on high alert. We thought this was going to last a while so we didn't want to just wait and lose our life savings and not move.
Prefab Review
Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, now I understand the connection.
evoDOMUS
So we came here in 2009 and didn't really know what to do. I have been working in Germany and in England. And the whole time with two German high-end prefab home manufacturers. One is Huf Haus and the other one is Baufritz. And so I've probably designed around 200 homes for Huf Haus and a dozen or two for Baufritz in England. And so this kind of shaped us a little bit. We were really into sustainable design and into modern homes. I mean I grew up studying and living in Berlin close to Bauhaus. This whole philosophy was kind of ingrained in my DNA. So when we came here we wanted to actually continue doing what we did successfully in Germany and England. But, we didn't really know how because for me, it was next to impossible to get licensed as an architect and I felt I was too old to go back to do an internship at an architecture firm and go through. So I said, “no, I’m not doing that.” So then we reached out to our German guys and said hey Huf Haus would you be open to building your beautiful homes here in the US? I can see a market here and so that's how we started.
Prefab Review
How interesting!
evoDOMUS
Yeah, and we actually built 2 homes, one near Seattle and 1 in Pennsylvania. But it quickly turned out to be a mind-blowingly expensive endeavor to ship an entire house to the US.
Prefab Review
Oh so you were like modularizing or flat packing them and then putting it on a boat?
evoDOMUS
Yeah people call it flatpack, I call it panelized. And they ship panels sitting side by side in a container and then shipped it over and then the whole crew came over from Germany.
Prefab Review
Yeah, that's expensive.
evoDOMUS
I was here. I got the third party approvals. I worked for months and months to get this all approved and get the visa for the workers and stuff like that. So that was a daunting task and after two homes, we decided this is not gonna fly and also the prices were just so crazy. We couldn't do it. And then we had another reset and thought, okay so I guess we got to do this here stateside because this is what we wanted to do. We wanted to build modern, beautiful, green, sustainable, healthy homes.
And so we started from nothing. Michelle, my wife, and I sat here in our little home in Cleveland Heights and thought about our future and decided it really was a bold step for us to start a prefab business in the United States out of nothing. And so we had a lot of good ideas. We had of course given our past, we had a lot of knowledge in how things should be done but we didn't have any connections. We didn't know anyone but luckily we found Bensonwood. And you guys know Bensonwood. And we worked with them. Yeah, and we built our very first home in Connecticut with Bensonwood.
But then we quickly learned that as much as I really like Bensonwood and the team, it was a great experience, but it was just too unpredictable for us because they only do the exterior wall panels and yeah, so no wiring, no plumbing. Nothing.
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