Mobile Home Loan Refinancing is Different - Article

Manufactured Housing meets Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright revolutionized the American home when he began to design Usonian houses with low horizontal lines and open interior spaces. Many of these features can be found in the sleek, modern design of Clayton´s new iHouse.

In 1936, when America was in the depths of a depression, architect Frank Lloyd Wright developed a series of homes in a style he called Usonian. Designed to control costs, Wright's Usonian houses had no attics, no basements, and little ornamentation. In the 1950s, Frank Lloyd Wright first used the term Usonian Automatic to describe a Usonian style house made of inexpensive concrete blocks. The three-inch-thick modular blocks could be assembled in a variety of ways and secured with steel rods and grout. Frank Lloyd Wright hoped that home buyers would save money by building their own Usonian Automatic houses. But assembling the modular parts proved complicated - most buyers hired pros to construct their Usonian houses.

Wright had envisioned Usonian homes to be affordable and easy to construct, which were the founding concepts of manufactured housing. For decades, Mobile Homes have been the most affordable housing available. Clayton’s new iHouse does come along with a substantial price tag, which has brought on some criticism. The common reply is that the iHouse energy efficiency options give the owner of the manufactured home substantial savings in energy costs.

Clayton is a renowned manufactured home maker, and their new iHouse is pioneering design and efficiency towards the future of Manufactured Housing. The iHouse sports a very modern, Usonian-like design and also integrates the latest in energy efficiency features.

Popular Mechanics magazine wrote an article about the iHouse in January saying: The I-House looks like a house you'd order from Ikea, sounds like something designed by Apple and consists of amenities–solar panels, tankless water heaters and rainwater collectors–that one would expect to come from an offbeat green company out of California selling to a high-end market.

In his blogger website devoted to the iHouse, Greenotter writes that What he liked about the house in general is that there´s not a lot of wasted space. The room sizes are efficient, honest, comfortable and functional.

Wright's Usonian homes were small, one-story structures set on concrete slabs with piping for radiant heat beneath. The kitchens were incorporated into the living areas. Open car ports took the place of garages. These design elements have been commonplace in Manufactured Homes since their emergence in the 1950´s. The only missing element to manufactured homes, found in a Wright design, was a modern style.

The basic iHouse is 992 sq ft, though the design's blend of indoor and outdoor space makes it seem bigger. Final prices haven't been set, but Clayton hopes to deliver it for about $100,000. But the "core" unit can be expanded by adding additional rooms, in different configurations, to suit the buyer's specific needs.

Frank Lloyd Wright believed that these stripped-down houses represented the democratic ideals of the United States. This ideal has been dormant, until now. With the development of the iHouse Clayton has integrated Wright’s efficient and minimalistic spirit into the manufactured and modular housing market.