Living Box – Prefabricated modular wood-house systemEnglish translation from a paper published in 'Bollettino degli Ingegneri n. 6/2016 pp. 3-18'Context and building design frameworkThe preliminary analysis, needful in order to recognize the context of the Living Box project, has been oriented toward the building design concepts both at contemporary level and at historical level. From this analysis emerged that a generic housing system is framed into a series of modularity criteria, and it is based on sizes referred to a single-family living unit, autonomous and complete (basic living unit). The combination of some living units allows to form composite configurations.From a sectoral screening of the building industry emerged that the current trend is dominated from single-family living units, which are aggregable among them in many configurations, and constructively set to surfaces or volumes prefabrication. So, the building design concepts and the building industry trend seem convergent between them.The yard and installation phases analysis has shown that the volume prefabrication is faster than the surfaces prefabrication. However, a volume typology imposes some liens from the building adaptability and management point of view. The carrying phase of the building components also has been analysed, particularly focusing on the maximum size allowable for the boxing into standard containers, in order to improve the handling and the stocking operations. It is necessary that the benefits deriving from the high prefabrication level are useful not only during the installation phase, but also during the overall production chain, from the industry to the yard.Following the sectoral screening, the modular building concept has been framed into a logic scheme, which highlighted that a generic building is a very complex system for users, locations and technologies, despite its prefabrication. From this consideration have been derived some guidelines useful during the project development.The lack of specific targets toward which address the Living Box, or rather not knowing the users neither the locations, has made necessary keep a design degree of freedom, in order to allows the functional flexibility. So, the project main target has been to design a prefabricated modular wood-house system, autonomous from the structural and plants point of view, aggregable in some living units to form composite configurations.