Thesis v11

“Home, rather than being a specific geographic location, is more and more about a set of personal activities, habits, and relationships than an established continuum of habitation in the same location.” (Swartz-Claus, 23)

Thesis

The automobile culture of the past century has been a driving force behind many architectural, economic and cultural developments. But at the same time a stigma has developed against the mainstays of American nomadism, especially the mobile home and the trailer park. How will American neo-nomadism develop compared with our European counterparts? Additionally, how will the developments in flexible, mobile architecture facilitate a more environmentally and economically sustainable society?

Theme

The average American moves every six years, spends seven weeks of every year in a car and upwards of $6,000 annually on their car. Americans are members of a growing throwaway consumer culture, where every commodity has a limited lifespan, even the house one lives in.

The automobile is an omnipresent element in American society, culture, and economics — so pervasive that its impact is often overlooked not only by the average American, but often by civic leaders and city planners. It has encouraged the development of a transient population and put a strain on traditional forms of city development. The American city is expected to provide ample housing to accommodate rapidly growing and frequently moving populations while at the same time providing a vast network of infrastructure to facilitate the commuter, the traveler and the upwardly mobile.

We may soon look back to “The Age of the Automobile” with wry nostalgia. A seemingly endless flow of inexpensive oil allowed America’s car culture to aggressively expand. Increased demand for oil in other world markets and recent disruptions in domestic oil production have stretched supplies and driven costs to new heights. The biological principle that growth is controlled by the scarcest resource available is equally applicable in economics, and indicates that the increasing scarcity of oil will significantly impact our car culture as well as our urban culture. The current expectation of maintaining both a house and a car -- one’s landed-ness and one’s personal mobility respectively -- is already being strained by changes in the availability of oil. The expectation of mobility has not yet been impacted noticeably by dramatically increased prices of fuel.

In order to adapt to these pressures, a choice will have to be made between the dream of the landed gentry and the desire for personal mobility. Despite the best intentions of architects and urban planners, Americans will continue to consider mobility a birthright.

There are three primary issues to be explored before development of prototypes can begin: sociology, sustainability, and economy. The principles of the American nomad movement can be defined by delving into the existing implications and research in these three areas, projecting the impact a nomadic lifestyle will have and predicting the effectiveness of these developments.

Vehicle

These issues will be explored at three scales:

Urban— how urbanists and city planners can begin to think in a way that is less about sprawl and more about infill and efficient use of already developed land as well as the development of the infrastructural needs of the lifestyle.

Organizational— a focused development of architecture as furniture. Developing means and methods for distribution, assembly, upgrading, replacement, and transportation of the elements of a house will be the primary concerns. This includes an intense investigation into the size, use and makeup of spaces that make up a building as interchangeable modules.

Architectural — based on developments in materials and methods that allow architecture to make a minimal impact on the environment while at the same time making it less materially transient and more mobile. This will include a strong emphasis on prefabrication and sustainability.

A series of small projects will be pursued to test the needs and limitations of this lifestyle as well as to establish potential cultural implications. Several prototypes will be examined that will focus on different mobile lifestyles: the ever-moving and the semi-nomadic; the single-family and the bachelor; and means of locomotion. The first dichotomy focuses on the difference in use, whether it is mostly transient or more related to the upwardly mobile segment of American homeowners who move regularly to bigger and better surroundings. The second will be an exploration of the different needs of a family with multiple members as opposed to the relatively simple bachelor lifestyle. The final category will explore a variety of options for the means of “nomadicity”[1].

All of the prototypes developed will rely heavily on techniques of prefabrication, developments in materials technology, and sustainability practices.

Theoretical Precedents: Individuation

Boradkar, Presad. “10,000 Songs in Your Pocket: The iPod as a Transportable Environment.” Transportable Environments 3, ed. Robert Kronenburg. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2006, p21-29.

With the marketing of the Walkman in 1979, the ability to control the personal environment became an obsession. The ability to carry around “fragments of other spaces” has recently hit a fever pitch with the release of the iPod in 2001. Combined with computer software, it provides and unprecedented level of personalization of the auditory makeup of the environment. Carrying around the environment in this way has accentuated the already existing “’mobile and home-centered way of living.’”

Its success cannot be separated from its aesthetic appeal. The sleak, simplified iPod has developed a cult following that no other personal music player has rivaled. It is immediately recognizable, even when you do not see the player itself, as the white ear buds are like a badge of membership.

The success of the iPod reveals that the previously assumed reasons for moving from home to home, a desire for novelty and a manifestation of upward mobility, should be reconsidered. Personalization and comfort in routine are prominent in this discussion. Personalization has become easy to accomplish because of advances in technology and applications that allow users to control the end result. Professional assistance is no longer presumed necessary. Flexible architecture is going to become vital. But the personalization that a custom house can offer is out of the reach of the majority. The development of a system, like the Dockable Dwelling by Matias Creimer, that provides a mass-produced, factory built solution to the personalization of the home is the next step in the individualized transportable environment. Elements are selected according to need and assembled on site in a short period of time. Elements can be added or subtracted or upgraded based on changing needs.

Perhaps as a result of the continuous and rapid changes in technology and culture, the need to establish a personal balance in routine will encourage the demand for architecture that can travel with you. The necessity of mobility for work or home is unlikely to change, but mobile architecture makes it easier to make the transitions. Traveling with ones home in tow provides a sense of security and belonging that cannot be matched by the arrangement of furniture and personal knick-knacks, not to mention less cluttered.

Case Study: Dockable Dwelling

Architect: Matias Creimer

Location: n/a

Date: 2003

Type: Residential

Lot Size: variable

Total Floor Area: variable

Reference:

The Dockable Dwelling project relies on mass-production and the development of easily assembled elements to allow people to have a custom house without breaking the bank. These also provide the opportunity for personalization and expression of individuality. The responsiveness of the system is particularly effective. Elements can be added and subtracted as needed in a very economical manner. Elements that are no longer needed can be sold back and reused in other houses, thus preventing large amounts of waste.

The lack of a coherent plan to address the urban implications of these dwellings is problematic. They are thought of as objects in a field, and can be characterized as suburban in nature. A balance must be developed between the personalization and flexibility of the dwellings with the problems that could be caused by inappropriate land use.

Theoretical Precedents: Major Life Events

Flade, Antje. “Psycological Considerations of Dwelling.” Living in Motion: Design and Archtiecture for Flexible Dwelling, ed. Mathias Schwartz-Clauss and Alexander von Vegesack. Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Stiftung gGmbH, 2002.

The tendency of Americans to move every 6 years is their response to Major Life Events. Major Life Events are external stresses that impact the way you live, how you feel about your environment, and your personal relationships. They range from births to deaths to changes in job to the holidays. The level of impact is dependent on what developmental stage you are in, what event occurred, and your existing personal support structure.

These events can be charted with changes in housing to see the correlation for Americans. The events that are most often associated with a change in residence are change in school, growth or shrinking of family, changes in employment, and marriage.

During the social development stage (roughly 3-22) one is learning how to exist in a social context and interact with others. What constitutes a major life event is often of less overall significance, with changes in school, changes in teacher and small social changes having a much larger impact.

During the career years, changes in jobs are the most common major life events. Whether the job changes are extreme (getting fired from a job or moving across the country for a job) or subtle (a raise or promotion), they are very often associated with changes in environment and residence.

The development of a family causes havoc on lives. Marriage, divorce, the birth of children, and the death of family members all cause a great deal of emotional strife and usually demand a change in environment to cope with associations or changing needs.

By the time most Americans reach retirement, they are expected to settle in to a life of jello and bingo. But a large majority of retirees are selling their homes and buying into mobile means of living. The chance to participate in their own personal “Second Discovery of America” is a chance that is not available until the restrictions of career and family are gone.

Case Studies: Mobile Dwelling Unit (MDU)

Architect: Lot-ek

Location: n/a

Date: 2001

Type: Residential, mobile

Lot Size: n/a

Total Floor Area: variable

Reference:

Facination with the shipping container has spawned dozens of proposals involving the refurbishing of old shipping containers into various building types. Lot-ek has gone a step further by taking advantage of the existing global infrastructure that makes the shipping containers so ubiquitous around the world. Lot-ek proposes the development of docking stations that provide “parking spaces” for shipping container houses. A house would be easily and cheaply shipped from one city to the next and just as easily fit into the docking station.

The MDU development by Lot-ek is primed for the current state of mobility that American’s need. It allows a level of economy when moving due to life events while at the same time promoting a greater sense of ownership of your own home. The problem becomes the level of flexibility. The units do not easily address changes in family size and make up.

The flexibility of the units is somewhat less sophisticated than the urban system. Though the units have various push outs to increase interior square footage when not in transit (like an RV), the potential for adding onto the units is extremely limited, both by the limits of the shipping container and the limits of the docking stations.

Theoretical Precedents: Sociology

Rammler, Stephan. “’A Mighty Fortress…’?! On the Sociology of Flexible Dwelling.” Living in Motion: Design and Archtiecture for Flexible Dwelling, ed. Mathias Schwartz-Clauss and Alexander von Vegesack. Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Stiftung gGmbH, 2002.

“[Sociology] is the science of social existence and its structures and processes, responsible for explaining different conditions in different epochs and regions.”

Rammler asserts that mobility is one of the most important considerations in social dynamics. Mobility effects a broad range of human social structures: employment, education, class distinction, social association, economic status, etc. Many demand difference levels of personal and social mobility.

The history of humanity has been characterized by a general need for mobility. The majority our history was nomadic as the hunter/gather lifestyle demands. Even with the development of crop and stock farming, occasional movement was necessary due to the needs of finding fertile land for planting for feeding cattle. The development of the first urban civilizations lead to a bifurcation of society of the landed gentry and the feudal workers who were tied to the land forcibly.

Modern society became more complex. The industrial and capitalistic system was based on the consumption of fossil fuels and spawned the creation of political nation-states. The age of exploration that followed made a societies success measurable in terms of the ability to control vast and non-contiguous areas of land. The development of trade created a wealthy class who were constantly on the move, going from port to port transporting goods.

The pre-war American social structure was characterized by the two generation family, the division of home and work, and the polarity of public/private life. The shift that occurred in post-1960s America has had long-lasting effects on the importance of mobility in the U.S.

The influx of immigrants, the phenomena of urban flight, and the tourism movement have all highlighted the importance of mobility in American life. American mobility has been characterized by a fascination with the concepts of heading west, upward mobility and tourism or the Second Discovery of America. These have helped solidify the place of mobility in the definition of the American Dream. Most American’s understand mobility as a birthright and its importance underscores the political, social, economic, and cultural spheres of American life.

Case Studies: Markies

Architect: Eduard Bohlingkt

Location: variable

Date: 1998

Type: Residential, mobile

Lot Size: n/a

Total Floor Area:

Reference:

The RV is the ultimate representation of the mobile American lifestyle. Changes in the RV over the years have made it into a specialized vehicle that can accommadate a variety of lifestyles without comprimising its mobility.

Markies is a project that shows that even the newest ways of thinking about how the RV can operate. The two long sides fold down to provide an increase in living space, which can be covered with a sheer cover if desired. Markies represents a growing consideration of the aesthetic nature of the mobile home, and begins to allude to a more flexible mobile architecture that can make more livable space available whenever the vehicle is parked.

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[1]"Nomadicity is the tendency of a person, or group of people, to move with relative frequency.” From “Definition of nomadicity,” Definitions, Dictionary for Internet and Computing Technologies (24 March 2006), http://www.whatis.com (accessed 19 August 2006).