BONE STRUCTURE
Stylish steel in Eastern Townships
Marc Bovet is no longer just California dreaming. The president and founder of Laval-based BONE Structure, he’s wide awake and proud of having opened the company’s first American office in San Francisco last year.
“I’m very bullish about this,” Bovet said about leading a U.S. expansion on the way to his ultimate objective of going global with a licensing scheme for his innovative home building system.
His decade-old company is set to build two impressive homes in Palo Alto in the coming months — “high seven-figure projects” — that will be a fabulous West Coast showcase for the firm’s home-grown technology.
The Palo Alto builds are among more than two dozen planned for California. “We are viewed as an awesome product because we are seismic-tested, energy-efficient, contemporary, and offer peace of mind to architects, engineers and design professionals. What they see is what they get, and that’s music to their ears.”
Bovet’s audacious steel component building and design system allows assembly using only a drill
and self-tapping screws, with no nails, cutting, mould or waste. Parts are precision factory-cut,
numbered, and a fail-safe built-in design feature halts assembly if steps are skipped or incorrectly applied. With a per-square-foot cost of about $250, a fair-sized home can run about $500,000, and take 12 to 14 weeks from schematic design to construction, assembled by a five-person crew in a week.
The energy aspect is helping drive the model, Bovet said, which is a sealed insulation system of polystyrene and soy-based polyurethane for superior R-values, and a clean, mould-free and infinitely modifiable home.
The steel construction and maximum energy efficiency generates huge savings and an end to mould and fungi growth in homes — “whether you are buying a $500,000 bungalow or a $3-million country home,” he added.
“Homebuyers fight like crazy to save on their mortgage but then throw all that money away on energy bills. It’s like spending a fortune on the latest down parka but the zippers and closures are garbage. It makes no sense.
“(It’s as) if our homes trap moisture and our kids develop allergies and asthma problems and what do we do? We condemn the dogs, cats and carpets?”
Bone Structure data confirms the design can save up to 90 per cent of heating and cooling costs, “representing 60 per cent of your energy bill,” Marc Bovet said. “That’s your savings, where your money is going.
“Governments try to get us to swap our lightbulb for LEDs, all very nice. But instead we should look at putting an end to heating and cooling the great outdoors!”
In drought-stricken, earthquake wary and avant-garde California, a steel, energy-efficient contemporary designed home is a big draw, as it is in flood-prone regions of the continent, because the structure can be stripped to the beams, easily washed, air dried and refinished.
“Our brand as a Canadian technology is also very valuable and respected there,” Bovet said. “Sometimes more than at home.”
The form and function favours open concepts with no interior load-bearing walls, for dramatic spaces that can be simply and affordably altered with doors, floors, walls and windows, making a BONE Structure home easily adaptable to future generational needs. BONE Structure recently introduced its first pitched roof that reclaims almost a third of a home’s space beyond what Bovet calls “a damn useless empty attic.”
The technology patented in more than 40 countries is at the heart of the global licensing objective, but that’s been stalled by increasing activity in North America in the short term.
“We have over 200 projects in the pipeline this year — from singleunit homes and multi-unit townhouses, to four-floor condo and office buildings, car washes and a recent McDonald’s in Mirabel that we built in four days,” Bovet said, adding that the company is assembling homes in nine of 10 provinces, and he is sourcing his steel across Canada while scouting manufacturing plants in California and Texas.
The company’s sales jumped
more than a quarter as soon as it looked west, said Bovet, who discovered people buying bungalows in Vancouver for a million dollars to tear them down and wait to rebuild.
“With a Canadian labour shortage of 327,000 workers to build 185,000 housing units, if you don’t have the time or the bundle of cash to pay two mortgages, you’ll love our solution which is expeditious.”
That reputation for speed and integrated design is helping the young firm gain traction, “and our sales are doubling every year.”
Growth is reflected in the number of licensed builders on board — 60, a mere eight per cent of applicants, he said — and more than doubling its head office team to 63 engineers, architects, industrial designers, urban planners and interior designers. On the way, the Laval firm has garnered a bundle of industry kudos and awards, including
We have over 200 projects in the pipeline this year — from single-unit homes and multiunit townhouses, to four-floor condo and office buildings, car washes and a recent McDonald’s in Mirabel that we built in four days.
No. 1 spot on Daily Planet’s top 10 Homes of the Future list.
“The reception, the narrative about us has been amazing,” said Bovet, who laughs off the moniker attributed to him by one industry observer as the “Elon Musk of homebuilding.”
“Easy, easy, easy!” he cries. “First let’s build some more!”
That’s what he is doing as he holds off the full global push, after completing a 16,000-square-foot Sudbury home, a Toronto Bare Bones Open House event that drew several thousands, and a special involvement in rebuilding Lac-Mégantic, specifically Yannick Gagne’s famed Musi-Café — at close to cost.
“It’s exciting to gain ground with our scalable model,” Bovet said, “but we’re so busy and we need to make sure we have the right formula. There’s no way we will compromise handing over our brand. No way, no way, no way.”
Bovet is inviting homebuyers and homebuilders to come check out a new Bare Bones event in action next weekend in off-island St-Zotique, where a 4,000-square-foot riverfront home is going up.
“You’ll see the process and the result of integrated contemporary design.” It’s like moving from a 30-year-old station wagon into a new minivan, he said.
“You step inside, look around and that’s when you have your aha moment.”