What’s Happening: The Bay Area startup Aro Homes is bringing upscale, net-zero prefab homes designed by Olson Kundig to market at record speeds. While its novel building process may set new sustainability benchmarks, the residences come with an eyebrow-raising $4 million price tag.

The Download: Residential housing accounts for 23 percent of global emissions, a problem starry-eyed tech startups have attempted to solve by reinventing home construction with mixed results. A gaggle of companies like Cottage, Homestead, Abodu, Mayasa, and Samara have rushed into the ADU market while former prefab unicorn Katerra went bust in 2021 after burning through a $2.4 billion investment from WeWork backer SoftBank.

Now, Aro Homes is joining the fray with its vision of disrupting the single-family housing sector. Leveraging the potential of prefab construction and thoughtful design, Aro Homes promises to build upscale, net-zero residences within a brisk 90-day timeframe. (Typical construction takes around 18 months.) The feat is achieved by building structural components at a plant in Sacramento and doing construction onsite in parallel. The startup tapped Olson Kundig—the renowned Seattle-based architecture firm best known for site-specific homes with a deep sense of place—to help create the 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom spec home. It’s the firm’s first shot at prefab design and one that principal Blair Payson hopes will “nudge the market” toward embracing more sustainable homes.

Thanks to a high-performing building envelope coupled with high-efficiency HVAC systems, gray water reclamation, and solar panels, Aro Homes are engineered to use 67 percent less energy than the AIA outlined in its 2030 Challenge Baseline for energy performance. While the structures may set a new sustainability benchmark for prefabs, the Mountain View spec home sold for $4.2 million—more than double the average cost for a home in the city and ten times the amount projected for Icon and Bjarke Ingels Group’s 3D-printed homes in Austin.

Aro Homes, which operates in the Bay Area, plans to expand to more cities and bring 1,000 houses to market each year. The company is off to a decent start thanks to launching publicly with $21 million from venture capital firm Innovation Endeavors, but intends to scale to make its homes more affordable. Its second build is scheduled to hit the market this month.

In Their Own Words: “The goal at the core of Aro Homes is to reimagine traditional residential construction and shift existing paradigms around what buyers typically expect in a home,” Payson tells AD Pro. “If this house can nudge the market to expect higher performance and higher-quality design, the impact could be exponential.”

Surface Says: We’re big fans of Olson Kundig, but boxy prefabs already feel dated when you see the possibilities 3D-printing unlocks for both affordability and non-cookie cutter design.

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For two years, the Whitney’s restaurant space has lacked a permanent culinary tenant, but soon it will welcome a new Frenchette bakery and café in the space formerly occupied by the Whitney Café and Danny Meyer’s Untitled. Menu specifics have yet to be announced, but if the Tribeca bakery’s menu is any indication, the new spot will likely feature French and Viennese pastries as well as sandwiches and pizzettes for lunchtime fare.

New Poetry, a verdant installation by Rashid Johnson, has already breathed new life into the restaurant’s cool gray facade, which overlooks the High Line. If that weren’t enough, the museum is also working with Frenchette’s chefs Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson on a new fine dining concept to occupy the museum’s eighth floor, complete with a work by Dyani White Hawk.

Years spent devising interiors inspired by the decorative arts encouraged Parisian designers Guillaume Garnier and Florent Linker to establish Garnier & Linker, an up-and-coming product design workshop focused on both material experimentation and handcrafting pure-shaped objects tailored to meet the demands of modern interiors. The duo recently unveiled their most ambitious collection yet that checks both boxes: Silcium, a series of one-of-a-kind sconces infused with savoir-faire that explore the curious interplay and natural imperfections that emerge when lost-wax cast glass interacts with light.

This month, arts education nonprofit ProjectArt celebrated the 2023 ProjectArt Gala and one-day exhibition “My Kid Could Do That” at Greenpoint Loft. The show featured childhood art from such blue-chip artists as Daniel Arsham, KAWS, and Jen Stark. Hosted by Emmy-winning journalist Michelle W. Park, the evening honored ProjectArt board member Agostina Pechi and supported ProjectArt’s mission to give youth a space to unleash their creative potential through free, high-quality art classes in public libraries nationwide.

When was it? Nov. 2

Where was it? Greenpoint Loft, Brooklyn

Who was there? Gutes Guterman, Landon Metz, Hannah Traore, Chloe Wise, Kouros Maghsoudi, Jonah Almost, Kevin Claiborne, Amol Sarva, and more.

When: Until Dec. 23

Where: Print Center New York

What: Curators Christina Weyl and Lauren Rosenblum look back at printmaking in New York with a retrospective of Lowengrund’s contributions to the midcentury art scene. Theirs is the first exhibition to focus solely on the artist, critic, and gallery director’s enduring impact as an unsung leader of printmaking and a driving force behind the resurgence of lithography. Her gallery and printmaking workshop The Contemporaries was commended by the New York Times in 1955 for its selection of prints, drawings, and sculpture by the likes of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. This show examines her legacy through 79 prints, along with drawings, videos, and one sculpture, some of her own creation and others by the legions of artists she championed at The Contemporaries.

It’s shaping up to be a whirlwind fall for the Brooklyn painter and sculptor. At the beginning of November, “Jupiter’s Lottery,” an exhibition of Schutz’s allegorical paintings, opened at David Zwirner in Chelsea. On November 15, a limited 250-count run of 1,000-piece puzzles made from the artist’s 2018 painting Mountain Run will launch on Platform. The original, a creation inspired by her children, is on view in a career retrospective at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. As gift-giving season approaches, we’re inclined to think it’s the kind of article suited to whomever in your life has already amassed an enviable library of art books. $250

Since 1872, Fritz Hansen has been crafting extraordinary design. Fritz Hansen’s highly distinguished Classic Collection comprises a number of the most iconic pieces of furniture from renowned Danish designers, including Arne Jacobsen’s Egg, Swan, and Series 7 chairs, and Poul Kjærholm’s PK22 chair and PK80 daybed. The Contemporary Collection features new furniture and accessories from some of today’s most inspiring, globally recognized modern designers, including Jaime Hayon, Piero Lissoni, and Cecilie Manz.

Surface Says: One of Denmark’s oldest and most revered furniture producers, Fritz Hansen is known for its Arne Jacobsen and Poul Kjærholm designs. In recent years, the brand’s smartly appointed pieces designed by Jaime Hayon have kept things exciting.

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Restorers uncover a fanged demon covered on an 18th-century painting.