Andres Duany has made it his mission to come up with an affordable housing model that hits the sweet spot between stigmatized manufactured homes and site-built houses. The factory-permitted Midcentury Modern is his solution: a stylish, 1,865-square-foot house deliverable by tractor-trailer and built for $90 per square foot. That’s midpoint between mobile units typically built for $50 a square foot and site-constructed homes starting around $130 per square foot. “That’s a big gap, and no one was delivering it,” Andres says. “But we still had a cultural problem. We undertook the idea that people hate mobile homes but love container housing. Much to our surprise, what we got was Philip Johnson houses from the 1960s, that Midcentury Modern box.”
DPZ’s flat-roofed, shipping container-style design exposes the floating foundation, made of concrete T-beams that balance the structure on four points. Banks of sliding glass walls open to decks on both sides. Deployable awnings, which cover the glazing during transport, can double as hurricane shutters. Inside are three bedroom suites, three and a half baths, a laundry, kitchen, dining room, and living room. The design is adaptable to different numbers of bedrooms, and on a site plan, the units can be rotated so that each has a private yard and a two-car carport.
Essentially, Andres says, “we designed mobile homes that look like containers. By trying to look like conventional houses, mobile homes are seen as an inferior product, with shallow roofs and stupid narrow ends. We married the technology of one to the aesthetic of the other.”
Custom on the Boards
Citation
DPZ CoDesign
Midcentury Modern
Saginaw County, Michigan
Project Credits
Architect: Andres Duany, DPZ CoDesign, Miami
Engineer: Paul Crabtree, Crabtree Group, Salida, Colorado
Project Size: 1,860 square feet
Site Size: .01 acre
Construction Cost: $90 per square foot
Key Products
Cladding: Board-and-batten vinyl
Decking: Zuri
Flooring: COREtec Plus, 5-inch plank, Gold Coast acacia
Foundation: Precast T-Rail concrete footings
Roof framing: 2×10 joists
Roofing: EPDM synthetic rubber
Thermal and moisture barriers:
Liquid-applied WRB
Windows: Western Window Systems
Images
Plans and Drawings
