BOX was borne from the simple premise that there just had to be a better way to design and build homes.

The architect and builder processes don't seem to have evolved much over the last couple of hundred years. The process is still inefficient, costly, fraught with uncertainty, subject to the whim of weather Gods. It is testament to human perseverance, vision (and a generous helping of naivety) that people still insist on building their own homes.

The challenge BOX overcomes is to create a system which at the same time can be worked by an architect to suit a site and brief, while also giving certainty of time and cost.

In a sense, BOX is your old-fashioned 'house company', but with a key difference.
Almost every notable house company has its roots in the building industry. The focus is on price - the biggest area possible for the best price. Designs are created with cost to build very much in mind at the expense of quality of space.

On the other hand, history is littered with examples of companies started by designers or architects who have attempted to come at the problem from the design angle without the appreciation of how complex and costly a house can be to build. Most of these ideas have failed because they were just too costly to produce as a result of limited understanding of the building process.

The key is getting the right architect together with the right builders and engineers to create a concept that both allows the architect a certain design freedom with the constraints of a system that has been is efficient to build.

You just have to look at the beautiful lines of a BOX to see how it is different from other house companies. It is very much driven by design, but not at the expense of build efficiency.

One of the best by-products of achieving balance is that you have a product that still requires architectural input because almost every house has a different site and different owner. However, the cost of the architect is greatly reduced because the concept and technical aspects have already been decided. The architect focuses on configuring the system and helping with material selections. You get the value of the architect without the cost usually associated with one-off design.

And because the system has been built before, the costs and construction process is fully understood.

The problem with bespoke architectural builds is that each house is basically a prototype and you have all the issues associated with doing something for the very first time. Not so with BOX. Not only do you have a beautiful modernist building, designed by a leading architect, but you have certainty of cost, build time and value for money.