Prefabrication experiments - 146 - future visions - 07 - The mobile home as mass housing - The Alpod

Even as other industries embraced industrialisation and the resulting heightening of productivity and quality, factory production of housing has largely festered in a debate between onsite or offsite construction. Even in the most industrialized nations manufactured housing remains a marginal portion of production. Throughout the 20th century factory built dwellings were regarded at best as reforming building culture or at worst as a poor replication of traditional building. At the core of the debate, a popular commercial story was evolving. By 1978 when HUD (Housing and Urban Development) established the Manufactured Housing Program, the mobile home sector of the housing industry was fulfilling what others had only dreamed of; producing an accessible and integrated product dwelling in a factory setting.

Contrary to other more progressive political systems in post World War II, and ignoring marginal collective housing experiments, the private sector was generally responsible for mass housing in the United States. The mobile home made the American dream of home ownership accessible. Today more than 20 million people live in the 8 million mobile homes produced and while the sector’s setbacks are well documented (fire, condensation, formaldehyde, and suspect building methods) the Manufactured Housing program has yielded a successful model. The negative connotations associated with the mobile home, although still prevalent, are gradually being replaced by architects, designers, developers taking notice of this small, efficient, mobile, flexible and adaptable building type. As housing is adapting to a substantially more informed market place, design is becoming a central force in realigning the sector’s potential.

Conceivably a result of the integrated smart phone culture, The «Alpod» aluminum pod prototype designed by Cybertecture, Aluhouse and Arup offers a look into the conceivable future of the mobile home. The stressed skin aluminum singlewide structure is a simple container-like multifunctional completely integrated unit; a made for order manufactured good. The Alpod’s roof and short walls include operable skylights and vents for natural ventilation while the long walls are either opaque or completely glazed. Highlighting the manufactured house's benefits and renewing its design culture, the efficient aluminum container, is proposed as a mobile hotel suite, minimal dwelling, cabin or exhibit space.  A definite dissociation from the customary mobile home designs, this forward-looking proposal endeavours to bridge the gap between design and housing production.  

From the mobile home to the Alpod