We’ve all had this experience; your choices ranged from a small pamphlet some well-intended recruiter of souls slipped into the mix, or several 2 year-plus-old Sports Illustrated issues, or the last Christmas edition of some women’s magazine (with the address of the magazine subscriber covered with black marker).

My guess is this still happens to many boomers and beyond who aren’t connected 24/7 and this is a true cohort effect. The reason I know is because it happened to me recently.

A Gem

Looking for a stimulus life-line I shuffled through the worn out tired issues before me and found…a gem.
The January, 2007 Smithsonian was the oxygen I needed to sustain me until it became my turn to be the patient. Specifically, the profile by William Booth, House Proud: High design in a factory-made home? Michelle Kaufmann believes she holds the key.

The story is about architect Michelle Kaufmann who believes good design belongs to the masses—and to do this she says you need an assembly line.

Unlikely Parings

Some time ago I mentioned the Buddhist monk (wearing robes the color of sunrise) strolling through the giant-flat-screen TV section in Costco. I was intrigued by the unlikely paring of the two; non-materialism of the monk and the hyper-materialism of Costco. The contrast jolts the senses, draws your attention and triggers thoughts of possibility.

Kaufmann’s innovative thinking of paring manufactured housing and high design that’s green and affordable, is thinking reminiscent of Bucky Fuller who emphasized designing responsibly by doing more with less.

The architect’s “eureka” moment came through a personal experience of trying to buy a home in the San Francisco Bay area. Her options were either buy a tear-down for a “gazillion dollars” and rebuild, or settle for a long commute from farmland that had been morphed into “soul-sucking tracts of mini-mansions.”

Her solution was to turn an obstacle into an opportunity by deciding, along with her contractor/builder husband, to design a simple home that had the potential to one day be mass-produced. And the Glidehouse was born; a prefab home with easy flowing space and a curtain of glass doors (hence the name) under a shed roof covered in solar panels. Kaufmann is now living in her dream home that’s prefab and is an advocate for the modular homes that are leaner and greener than traditionally stick-built homes.

Green Aging in Place with Prefab

Kaufman says: “I think about the house like I think about a hybrid car. You can be more efficient, but you don’t have to change your life.”

The applications with her concept of home as modular, mass produced, affordable, efficient, green, and tailored to individual needs, are potentially revolutionary for aging in place. I envision neo-traditional neighborhoods that are walkable, mixed use, and multi-generational, graced with modular-green-affordable Glidehomes. This could be a solution to isolation in the suburbs for many boomers and beyond.

I think Kaufmann is on to something here and the paring of aging in place with universal design prefab could offer an optimistic future for an idea whose time has come.

See:
Aging-autos-and-walkable neighborhoods
The Buckminster Fuller Challenge
Michelle Kaufmann blog