Tiny house and Mid-Century Modern trailer for affordable housing
Back in September I wrote about DPZ CoDESIGN’s innovative new architecture for tiny houses and trailers—affordable housing that can be manufactured and assembled into villages with some of the informal community advantages of “trailer parks,” yet with a twist. The living spaces could be placed on underutilized parking lots and be mobile and adaptable for climate change.
Four months later, it is great to see prototypes of these units built and on display at the International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas this week. Here’s a photo of Andres Duany of DPZ alongside the two new model homes: the “tiny house” at 204 square feet, and the 3-bedroom 3.5-bath “Mid-Century Modern” trailer at 1,650 square feet. These practical houses make a nice change from NAHB’s “New American Home” for 2020, a 7,683 sq. ft. behemoth that is as unsustainable as it is unaffordable.
Duany thinks the humble house on wheels could be the key to retrofitting suburban parking lots and providing the jobs housing balance in some of the nation's most expensive regions. To be acceptable he thinks that it is crucial to do a much better job at designing these units, and the prototypes are a good start.
