It’s everywhere, it’s easy. The first time I saw modular building was in Portland, Oregon. A new building was going up across the street from an apartment where I was staying. Every day workers and cranes wheeled around the site. The structure went up at an incredible rate: in one week it grew from skeletal to a third complete. The secret was prefabricated parts. Whole segments of rooms and exterior walls were lifted from flatbed trucks to perches on the building’s frame. Now these uninspired cube-a-tons are being chunked together all over my town, setting right angles across the pixilated cityscape.

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