[Images: Houseboats: Richard L. Harbus, NYTimes; Sausalito, CA. /Artwork: designslinger]

Glancing over the New York Times web page the other day, the house boat image (on the left)
caught my eye. The accompanying article was about a couple who took a rusty hull and turned it into their home on a canal in Berlin's Tiergarten Park. I've been thinking about their housing choice ever since.

I don't consider the Hwang/Wedepohl home similar to people who spend a weekend,
or several weeks vacation, on a boat as "boat living." This family has chosen the former grain and gravel hauling barge as their principal residence and don't spend time there on an occasional basis, or as a getaway from their main place of occupancy. There were three things that I found interesting about this choice of housing stock: first, the dynamics of family life in such a small space; two, the design challenges in reworking such a utilitarian structure into a substantially different use; and three, the recycling of a barge hull into a usable, productive alternative to new house construction.

[Images: Shipping containers; Container apartments, tud5000 via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]

Of course, this is nothing new. People have been living on houseboats for centuries, and have
been recycling old hulls into new housing stock for at least the past decade. Have you heard about the cargo container housing movement? There is a whole new world of recycling shipping containers into housing out there. When we were working on a movie last year, one of the crew members asked me for advice and input, on turning six containers he had purchased into a house he planned to build on a piece of property in the Malibu hills.

Turns out, the cost of the containers and the construction involved, can be substantially less
than conventional home construction. And, you're recycling unwanted material to boot. It was an interesting design problem because all the containers are exactly the same size, so you have a modular formula that has to be worked into a livable home environment. It was fun!

[Images: Mobile home; Updated mobile home via metropolitan home /Artwork: designslinger]

But, before there were cargo hulls and shipping containers, we can't help but remember
the mobile home. It doesn't fit neatly into the innovative reclaimed material category, but it does fit into the low cost, tight quarters example. And, the stereotypical Floridian mobile home school of design has moved into the 21st century as well. You are no longer bound by the old concepts of trailer park living; your single-wide can be as chic as your imagination, and money, will take you.

I think this may be, in part, due to the ridiculously high housing prices in places like California,
primarily Southern California. As the cost of housing exploded here, an option became buying in a trailer park. But, the buyers were not your typical retired, or lower income clientèle, just a buyer who couldn't, or didn't, want to spend over a million dollars for a 1,000 square foot house. Also consider that there are some prime trailer park locations in and around Los Angeles. Santa Monica has one that overlooks the ocean, and Malibu has one that sits right on the beach. Now, those trailers are going to be much more expensive than the ones located in parks in Palm Springs, but they are going to be much less expensive than a bricks and mortar house.

So, taste makers no longer turn up their noses at the "manufactured house." The shelter
magazines have jumped on the bandwagon, which presents its own seal of approval. Perhaps we will soon see a new monthly magazine on the stands devoted solely to the architecture and interior design of the barge, container and trailer conversion movement.