Last May, after Michelle Kaufmann announced that economic pressures forced her to shut down her company, Michelle Kaufmann Designs, she suggested she’d apply her experience producing single-family, green modular homes to other categories of sustainable design.

That in fact seems to be what is happening. Kaufmann in September sold the assets of her firm mkDesigns – which included the green modular-home designs for Glidehouse, mkLotus, and Sunset Breezehouse – to prefab specialist Blu Homes, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, and until February worked with the company as it incorporated the designs into its product line. (On Wednesday, Blu announced the launch of its first two-story home, called Blu | Evolution, which the company is presenting as a “spacious green home suitable for private residences, schools or institutional housing or green developments.”)

A different path

On the blog page of Michelle Kaufmann Studio, her design consultancy, Kaufmann notes that she has been designing single-family homes, eco-resorts, and multifamily communities – most of which use modular construction, though some are site-built. The thread running through all these projects, she says, is the one that helped define mkDesigns: a commitment to sustainable designs that are “healthy, smart, efficient, and conserve water and other natural resources.”

“I refuse to give up on the vision that so many have invested so much into. However, I am doing it in a different way,” she writes in her most recent blog post, adding that her consultancy “will be launching new green prefab designs in the upcoming months (more on that soon…). I am also consulting with a few companies who share a similar vision and are at a scale to pull off volume and make a big impact.”

We’ll stay tuned.