Prefab Finds a Home in Fire-Ravaged Neighborhoods of California.

For decades, utopian designers and populist dreamers have glorified prefabricated housing. The idea to mass-produce a home like an automobile, with much of the process standardized in a factory, promised greater efficiency and lower costs than traditional stick-built architecture.

“It’s a dream that has confounded generations of architects and developers,” said Amanda Dameron, until recently the editor in chief of Dwell, a shelter magazine that is one of prefab’s biggest proselytize