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They've been heralded as the future of building and the solution to housing shortages, yet prefabs have failed to take off. Elaine Knutt asks whether they still have a future

The Prefabulous London exhibition running at New London Architecture is based on an ABC of prefab and modular construction. Considering that prefab has been on the architectural agenda for the best part of a decade, most architects with an interest in housing could probably recite this alphabet unaided: A is for affordable, B is for bricklayers (or lack thereof), C is for container, D is for demountable, E is for engineered, F is for factory….

But there is another prefab alphabet, one the exhibition organisers might not be so keen on: C is for Challenge Fund, the Housing Corporation's funding programme that was undersubcribed after not enough prefab projects came forward; M is for Piercy Connor's Microflat, never built because land costs in central London put the product out of price range for young professionals; and P is for Peabody Trust, a prefab pioneer that found the promised cost savings never materialised.

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