Paul Livornese, a designer with Time Inc. in New York City, knew he wanted a weekend house in the mid Hudson Valley. After searching for land online, he found his dream spot in Kerhonkson, Ulster County: a rocky promontory from which he could take in the sweeping Catskill Mountain views and watch hawks surf the thermals below. Shortly after he closed on the stunning five-acre parcel, he began thinking about what kind of home to build. The site demanded something special and, because of Livornese's artistic flair, something unique. "I wanted something modern that had warmth and was organic in its environment."

Livornese considered building a custom home, but cost was a limiting factor. He also considered modular homes, which are obviously more economical, but he knew that the design and style options were limited. The last thing he wanted on his beautiful land was a cookie-cutter home.

His answer came to him while flipping through the pages of Dwell magazine. In 2003, the popular architecture and design magazine held an invitational competition for an innovative modern home designed for prefabricated construction. The winner was Resolution: 4 Architecture (www.re4a.com), a firm of young architects in New York City. Poring over the drawings and models of the winning design, Livornese was instantly hooked. Noting that the firm's offices were located just blocks away, he visited that very day and began planning his new home.

Beneath the soaring roof is the great room, which features bamboo floors, a cold-rolled steel fireplace, brushed-aluminum fan, plywood dining table with Herman Miller chairs, and endless light and views.

What Dwell was promoting in its competition was a modern home for mass production—long considered the holy grail of modernism. Modern design, which became popular at the turn of the 20th century, was based on the idea of stripping away ornamentation and emphasizing function—an approach that was also intended to reduce building costs. Ironically, today it costs more to build modern, and the style carries a strong whiff of elitism.

Finding a way to make homes modern and affordable continues to be a challenge. "Custom-designed modernist architecture is beyond the financial reach of many people, and so prefab is viewed as a design and production ideology that has the potential to deliver affordable modernism," writes Michael Sylvester, the publisher of Fabprefab.com, a website clearinghouse dedicated to investigating the market for modernist, factory-built residential architecture. "While kit or prefab homes have been available in a range of either 'traditional' or 'alternative' forms for many years, surprisingly few prefab homes exist that truly embrace modernist ideals."

RES4 partners Joseph Tanney and Robert Luntz had long been convinced that Americans were hungry for modern design and displayed a rising design consciousness—for example, in the popularity of magazines like Dwell; Design Within Reach, a catalogue of designer furniture; flat-screen TVs and cell phones; and housewares at Target designed by Phillipe Starck. The partners wanted to tap into the market and offer relatively affordable modern architecture.

For several years, Tanney and Luntz worked to "leverage existing construction methodologies of prefabrication" and wed them to modern design. Their solution, says Tanney, also a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, and Pratt, "is a building system based on Modules of Use"—living, eating, and sleeping modules, or 3-D volumes—that can be "recomposed," or arranged and combined like Legos, according to the client's taste.