This Prefab Company in Australia Wants to Be the Tesla of Home Building

When Oscar Martin was building his home in Bondi Beach, he saw firsthand the pitfalls of traditional construction, including cumbersome delays, unexpected expenses, and excessive waste. When certain prefab elements arrived to the site, they went up in a single day, and he began to wonder why the rest of the house couldn’t be as simple.

Immediately, Martin, who is an entrepreneur and cofounder of hit news website Pedestrian TV, started a search for prefab homes that led him to beautiful examples in both Japan and Scandinavia. They were good, he thought, but still lacked in both energy efficiency and aesthetic appeal.
Inspired to make something better, he partnered with Australian architect Peter Stutchbury, who’s long been a proponent of sustainable building. Together they created Dimensions X, a home building company that plans to deliver planet-friendly prefabs at the click of a button.

"I want to do what Tesla has done for auto, only with housing," says Martin, referring to both the experience of buying one of Elon Musk’s cars and the reduced energy impact of driving one.

Stutchbury and Martin, along with lead project architect Alejo De Achaval, have since designed the first prototype, OM-1, a roughly 613-square-foot design made of cross-laminated timber (CLT), topped with a flat roof with eaves, and packed with energy-efficient components that make it affordable to build, purchase, and live in. And while buying one won’t be quite as simple as a single mouse click, the experience still promises to be slick.

"We have an online configurator where people can build the homes and see real-time pricing based on decisions made," says Martin, citing unknown costs as one of his main gripes with traditional building.