Housing trends come and go, but Prefabulous Small Houses , the latest book from prefab evangelist Sheri Koones, isn’t about a flavor of the month. She argues that this is the most efficient, sustainable, and happiest way to build our homes.

This is the eighth tome on residential design Koones has penned and the fifth in her Prefabulous series. When she began delving into the world of housing design in the early 2000s, prefabs had a low-brow reputation.

“People were saying, modular housing? Those are double-wides, like trailer homes,” she says. No longer.

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Since then, prefab has evolved and become part of a broader conversation about how we build. And thanks in part to publications like Dwell, factory-made homes have shed their banal stereotypes and have become luxurious status symbols in and of themselves.

But to Koones, building small using prefabrication methods–which can involve modules or kit of parts and SIP construction (short for structurally insulated panels, which are like Oreos, but the filling is insulation and the cookies are usually oriented strand board)–are destined to become the status quo for a slew of reasons, namely that they are more resource efficient to build and maintain, since they require fewer materials to construct and less energy to heat and cool.

“My books have evolved and [through my research] I’ve gotten to the point where I think this is the ideal method,” she says. “People should aspire to having these houses as a goal now and in their future.”

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Changing demographics, the volatile housing market, and lifestyle shifts are pushing prefab mainstream as well.