vision: control the factory process

jennifer siegal
office of mobile design
venice, calif.
www.designmobile.com

Jennifer Siegal has worked on a kibbutz in Israel, traveled throughout Southeast Asia observing nomadic structures, and lived at the remote Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. But the most important trip she takes these days is to prosaic Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., where production of her prefab designs takes place. Unlike many of her prefab peers, she works exclusively with one factory. “The facility I use builds one-off things for clients like NASA and Disney,” she says. “I went to them when I realized the manufactured housing industry was not open to change.”

Siegal has always followed her own path. She started thinking seriously about mobile homes while teaching in North Carolina in 1996 and '97, at a time when few architects thought of a trailer as an intentionally designed object. “I noticed all the bad mobile design around me,” she said. “It seemed nobody had been rethinking trailers. I started using them in my classes, having students take old trailers and manufactured housing and rework them.” The concept of movable, flexible structures took hold of her, and it wouldn't let go.

Renderings courtesy Office of Mobile Design The Swellhouse, the firm's customizable prefab prototype consists of structural insulated panels wrapped around a pre-engineered steel I-beam frame. The frame's S shape allows for uninterrupted loft-like spaces and large expanses of glass.

The SCI-Arc graduate moved back to Los Angeles in 1997 and started her firm, Office of Mobile Design, the next year.

OMD designs some stick-built projects as well as truly mobile structures such as the interactive, collapsible ice-cream kiosk it did for Häagen-Dazs. With housing, though, its main focus falls somewhere in between. The two prefab prototypes the firm designs and sells, the Portable House and the Swellhouse, both sit on permanent foundations. They bridge the gap between the site-built and the mobile, harnessing the construction quality of the former and the mass production capabilities of the latter.

The modular Portable House is completely assembled at the factory and arrives ready to install. Buyers can choose from 10 floor plans and two sizes, depending on their needs and budget; a 12-foot-by-40-foot unit costs $79,000, and a 12-foot-by-60-foot unit goes for $125,000. The Swellhouse, on the other hand, is a customizable residence made up of panelized walls on a steel frame—components are shipped and assembled on site. It costs about $180 to $200 per square foot to build the Swellhouse in the L.A. area, but costs vary depending on the location and the client's choice of materials.

Both models took Siegal years to develop. “It's a lot more complicated than just putting together a kit of parts,” she says. Her determination to make her prototypes into viable products extends well beyond their design and fabrication. She's also done much of her customers' logistical legwork, establishing home relationships with real estate agents and financial consultants who are open to the concept of prefab. Her cover-all-the-bases strategy seems to be working: Since the homes became available to the public in 2003 (Portable House) and 2004 (Swellhouse), OMD has sold eight of the former and five of the latter. It's also designing an L.A. artists live/work community of 40 Portable Houses, as well as two low-income housing projects, each of which will contain a combination of 40 to 60 Portable Houses and/or Swellhouses.

Renderings courtesy Office of Mobile Design

In addition to exploring both panelized and modular construction, Siegal has also investigated the potential of using shipping containers as prefab building components. In 2003 she and her firm finished work on the Seatrain House, a 3,000-square-foot custom home in downtown L.A., built from containers and structural steel. “I learned a lot from that project,” she says. “I usually don't recommend containers, mostly because you can't get a permit for them in L.A. But the idea of using seagoing refuse is really interesting.” Other notable projects include the master plan for an on-the-boards development of Modern prefab houses in Joshua Tree, Calif.; the Eco-Skate House, a custom modular residence for a professional skateboarder in Malibu, Calif.; and the Hydra House, an unbuilt underwater dwelling the firm designed in two different versions for Popular Science and Wallpaper magazines.

The Hydra House's futuristic skin and interiors signal another one of Siegal's fascinations: ultra-high-tech, high-performance building materials. She devoted much of her 2002–03 Loeb Fellowship at Harvard's Graduate School of Design to studying them, and is writing a subscription-only publication for Princeton Architectural Press, to debut this month, called Materials Monthly. “Subscribers get a box with samples of three materials and a book explaining them,” she says. “The only way that this stuff will get out into the world is if architects use it in their practices.”

Courtesy Office of Mobile Design Because its plan and materials are adaptable according to the client's wishes and budget, the Swellhouse can fit any site and climate condition.

Yes, Siegal is a busy woman. And her biggest production yet is in the pipeline: Inhabitable Art, a collection of prefab house designs by 10 well-known architects, will be built in a new, fully automated manufacturing facility she's building in Riverside, Calif. (OMD will release more information on Inhabitable Art later this year.) When she needs a break from designing, running her six-person firm, writing, and public speaking, Siegal leaves her Venice, Calif., house and goes mobile in her 1972 Airstream down to her trailer in Baja California, Mexico. Siegal clearly has a personal stake in the future of prefabricated structures, and her motives for believing in them are as big-picture as they are practical. “Economics is definitely one reason, although prefab is not always cheap,” she says. “And the tolerances are very tight and precise. But one thing I've realized over the years is that too many choices overwhelm people. They want things whittled down because time is a factor.” If she has her way, a well-designed and well-built house will be the only choice there is.