Its hardly surprising that people are looking at throwing up ten thousand dollar cardboard prefabs when the land costs three hundred and ninety five thousand pounds and it takes seven hundred and eighty nine weeks to get planning permission for the faux cardboard finish on the outside breeze blocks. Top tip is that there are still a few post war Nissan hut bungalows hidden around the country that have heating and decorating already built in with a garden full of plants available at half the price. And being over half a century old they probably wont float away in the next climate change rainstorm.
Of course you cant get insurance for them but you can fix anything that might go wrong with them with a bag of nails and a few packets of pollyfiller.

I do not see the connection between Jeremy Siawson's comment and the article (feature) itself. The feature is not about "cardboard prefabs" (the article says the external finishes can be galvanised or wooden or a combination of both; the construction appears to be steel framed; and the interior walls appear to be standard plasterboard).
If he is worried about UK building regulations, he should direct his comments to his local planning authority or his local political parties, and not to Gizmag.

For the uninformed like me:
"A Nissen hut is a prefabricated steel structure made from a half-cylindrical skin of corrugated steel design during World War I, a variant of which (the Quonset hut) was used extensively during World War II."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissen_hut

Not sure why they think 3 weeks is fast as from scratch stick built homes are regularly built that faster or faster. The fastest was in less than a day.
Nor do I understand why they must cost so much. A 1500sq' house shouldn't cost more than $40k for parts and labor. I've been doing them for far less. Just finishing a 12'x12' studio cabin for under $2k including labor.
I never new those were called Nessen huts as I've always known them as Quanset huts. They are still available under metal buildings in pop Sci and other magazines and usually in local weekly ad flyers.

I don't see how this is all that much different from the traditional "manufactured housing" (aka "mobile home"). Sized anywhere from 800 sq ft to over 2200 sq ft (double wide), also available in multi-story variants up to 4400 sq ft, reasonably priced and can be delivered and installed on-site in a couple days.

What an incredibly ugly design! I would vehemently protest if someone wanted to build one in my neighborhood and lower my property value as a result. Why do these architects think they have to come up with such far out designs? This would fit in real well in a yard full of shipping containers down by the docks, not in a neighborhood of single family homes. UGH!

This thing, might make a nice garage, but that by no means is a home.

Another modular prefab housing idea that won't go anywhere beyond having a few, if any, built.
Most people want a house that looks like, well, a house. They want houses that at least from the outside resemble some common and traditional style in their culture.
Try to go outside the local norms and there's usually resistance of some sort.
That's why the most successful prefabricated housing is the double and triple wide manufactured home. Built on a steel frame and moved to the site on temporarily installed axles. Been done like that for a long time and in the past 30 or so years finished out to look the same as a site built house.
Recently I've seen ones being moved on large flatbed trucks, with no steel frame under the house. They're carefully moved off onto a foundation much like for a site built house.
If you want to be successful in panelized prefab housing you need to make your product look like a *house*, not a mashup of Wright's and Eames' worst nightmares and do it for considerably less than the big chunks of manufactured homes rolling down the highways.

Unfortunate that all these prefab houses are designed in complete ignorance of what is required to have photovoltaic panels installed on them for minimizing installation costs and maximizing energy production. Excellent example of not being able to think outside the box - literally!

@ jerryd - think you can hit that cost per sq/ft in San Diego. Let me know and you may have some business here. Good luck.