The Manufactured Home As The Total Work Of Art ?

Architecture critic Neil Levine said of Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian homes, '....moving into a Usonian was like checking into a hotel. Everything was taken care of for you by Wright. You needn't ever buy another stick of furniture.' Every Wright home was a fitted furniture home where each room had its complement of built in desks, shelves, beds, you name it. This heavy use of built-ins was an aspect of Wright's conception of the home as the Total Work Of Art. Now its not clear whether Wright conceived of the idea of the home as the Total Work Of Art on his own, or whether he picked up on the idea as it travelled to the US from Europe where K. F. E. Trahndorff in his 1827 essay Ästhetik oder Lehre von Weltanschauung und Kunst (or 'Aesthetics, or Theory of Philosophy of Art') coined the term. In any event its fair to say Wright was the first architect in the US to really incorporate the idea into architecture. Wright, as Levine mentions, took care of everything inside the house and out. And so with regard to the manufactured home, why not design the manufactured home so that everything is thought through, so that the home has its due complement of fitted furniture throughout at the same time it is sited in private, pleasant garden like courtyards ?

Now manufactured home sales still account for a small fraction of new home starts, on the order of 10%. And so as a strategy to boost manufactured sales, I would like to propose conceiving of the manufactured home, along with its subdivision design, in the spirit of the Total Work Of Art, in German abbreviated as Gesamtkunstwerk. For this exercise, a singlewide was chosen designed with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. Following out Wright's philosophy, the living room is made quite large by manufactured standards, around 30 ft by 15 ft. A 7 ft by 7 ft dining table with banquette seating on one side makes for a cozy yet open plan feel. Lots are 108 ft by 48 ft, fitted with outdoor kitchen and dining, living, and spa. A somewhat elongated shed serves as carport, storage, and outdoor kitchen roof. As for the subdivision itself, gravel was chosen over asphalt. Gravel is much less expensive, much more forgiving when laying out utility trenches, and allows rain to percolate down to the water table.