Business Notes HOUSING

Start with a steel coil, load it into a tube-forming machine that bends the metal into stackable logs, wrap the surface with metal mesh and then cover it with plaster and wallboard. Result: sturdy, affordable housing. Florida Developer Stefan Johansson, 28, is building five town houses in Coconut Grove < based on a novel design licensed from a Venezuelan company called Tronco (Spanish for "log").

The cost of building a steel-log superstructure is less than $7 per sq. ft., vs. about $9 for a wood-frame or $10 for a concrete-block structure. The hollow logs provide twice the insulation value of conventional materials, says the developer, yet the houses are designed to be sturdy enough to withstand Florida's hurricanes.