Muhlenberg College’s five new residence halls house 29 students each. (Chronicle photograph)

Allentown, Pa. — It was a busy summer at Muhlenberg College. As soon as the spring semester ended, crews began demolishing seven small plywood buildings that had been constructed in 1981 as temporary student housing. Then the steep hillside the buildings had occupied was completely regraded and a huge crane was parked on a concrete pad in the middle of the site. On June 14, the crane lifted into place the first of 90 steel-and-concrete modules that — within just 10 days — made up five new dormitory buildings designed to house 29 students each.

After the modules had all been welded and bolted together, crews began hooking up utility connections, adding exterior details, and bringing in kitchen appliances (the modules came with cabinetry and tile already in place). Three of the buildings opened to students in late August, and the other two are due to open by the middle of this month.

The three-story, 8,300-square-foot buildings bear no resemblance to the sparsely detailed manufactured houses that turn up in some suburbs — these are solid-looking, attractive buildings. Designed by Spillman Farmer Architects, a firm in Bethlehem, Pa., the buildings are walled in brick — two in a browner shade and three in a shade with more orange. Two of the buildings have round arches over their doors, while the arches on the other three are pointed. Brickwork bands separate one floor from another and enliven the walls. They’re not architectural standouts — especially not on a campus with a striking 1976 arts center by the architect Philip Johnson — but they’re far more appealing than many residence halls, new or old.

Each of the buildings has six apartments, most with one double bedroom and three singles; all have full kitchens that are separated by breakfast bars from living areas furnished with matching sofas and chairs. Bath areas have double sinks with a shower room on one side and a toilet room on the other. Each apartment consists of three modules — a larger one accommodating the bath, kitchen, and living room, and two smaller ones holding bedrooms. That’s six modules per floor, 18 per building. The roofs, which were too large to truck to the campus, were constructed on tennis courts that adjoined the site and were within the crane’s reach.

The construction cost was $13.2-million, including a separate laundry facility that will serve all five of the buildings. David C. Rabold, Muhlenberg’s capital-projects manager, says the cost was about what the college would have spent for conventional buildings (“stick-built” is the term for a building constructed entirely on its site). He says the college saved a little money on the cost of the buildings themselves, but spent the savings paying crews to work the long days necessary to get the whole project finished in just one summer.

The big advantage of choosing the manufactured buildings was the speed with which they could be delivered, says Mr. Rabold. Design and planning started just over a year ago, in June 2006, and the old housing remained in use until the middle of this past May. Now three of the new residence halls are in use. “The issue was time,” he says.

The buildings were manufactured in Lebanon, N.J., by Kullman Buildings Corporation, a company founded in 1928 to build diners. Kullman can produce almost any kind of structure, according to Avi Telyas, the company’s chief executive. “The architect sits down and designs what he likes,” says Mr. Telyas. “We give him a few ground rules.”

Some of the rules relate to the size and weight of the modules, which have to fit under highway bridges and not be too heavy for the crane (the largest modules in the Muhlenberg buildings are 13 feet wide by 57 feet long, and weigh 70,000 pounds). Mr. Telyas adds that because the modules must stand up to the rigors of being transported to their sites, manufactured buildings are structurally superior to stick-built construction.

Another advantage, he says, is that the client can walk through modules at the factory as soon as the first ones are finished. In Muhlenberg’s case, college officials changed the bathroom layout after seeing the first modules, making the sink space larger and the toilet room smaller. And even though alcohol is forbidden in Muhlenberg dorms, officials took a better-safe-than-sorry approach and decided to make the shower floors strong enough to support kegs.

Mr. Avi also notes that building modules in a factory minimizes environmental disturbance at a building’s eventual site. “If you did this conventionally, you’d be here 16 to 18 months,” he says of the Muhlenberg projects. Instead, the site is being landscaped after only one season.

Thanks to intense planning, including a computer model that showed the route of every piece as it would be lifted and set in place by the crane, the construction process went fairly smoothly, although the crews building the five roofs on the tennis courts had trouble keeping up. In the end, says Mr. Rabold, the crane operator nicked the tennis-court fence just once as he maneuvered a roof around some utility wires. Four clips popped off the fence, but they were easily put back. —Lawrence Biemiller

The crane lifts a second-story module onto one of the new buildings. (Muhlenberg College photo)

A model shows how the buildings’ elements fit together. (Chronicle photograph)