(Re) Manufactured Suburbia

One of the first suburbs in the US was Lewellyn Park in New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York City. Affluent 'captains of industry' - for example Thomas Edison of Edison electric, George Merck of Merck pharmaceutical, and Samuel Colgate of Colgate Palmolive - took to Lewellyn Park, building sprawling mansions on acreage, taking their cue from the baronial English estate spawned by the Industrial Revolution. Now while this was all very well for those at the top of Gilded Age heap, it was really not that practical an example for the middle class who were also beginning to make their escape from gritty industrial cities. Yet what the robber barons built on acreage the middle class was talked into building in miniature on fractional acre lots.

From the get go the need to broadcast one's 'status' trumped more practical concern for a pleasant, useful architecture. One notes that to this day, housing for the middle class often has two dining rooms - one in the kitchen that's actually used and one for 'company' - and two living rooms - one a 'den' that's actually used and one for 'company'. The house is clumsily placed at the very center of the lot with the front given over to show with its manicured lawn while right and left are typically cast in the role of unused 'setbacks'. Only with the backyard is there much inclination to put it to use, for the most part with awkward results due to the absence of sufficiently high privacy walls.

In any event the choppy economic seas we are sailing into suggest the coming end of the American suburb as we know it, that the hour has at last arrived in which the much scaled back dwelling is to become the new norm. Now the saying is from crisis springs opportunity. One must hope that the possibility has presented itself for scrapping the present awkward and artificial layout of house and lot in preference for the much more natural and much more appealing courtyard based home. And as replacement for costly site built homes what looks to be coming in is affordable manufactured housing. VRT proposes a two mobile home template, one unit for bedrooms and bathrooms, another for kitchen, dining, and living. These are positioned to form a courtyard between them for pleasant garden / spa outdoor living, augmented with a bit of site framing for deck, walkways, and stairs. At the front is positioned a kit based workshop / storage building with carport. VRT believes it imperative to provide generous storage / workspace to get the middle class fully on board with this new template for suburban life.