"It may take hammers and nails to build a house, but to build a prefab it takes patience and perseverance."
Nearly two years ago, shortly after Hurricane Katrina made landfall
along the Gulf Coast, D.C. area architect Carib Daniel Martin derived
the idea for HELP (Housing Every Last Person), an immediate-response
emergency housing system that could be assembled quickly and transported
easily to wherever the need arose. Assisted by more than 40 volunteers,
Martin spent the Labor Day weekend of 2005 building a full-scale
prototype of the HELP Home. Since then he has spent most of his time
working to turn this idea into a reality.
The HELP Home received immediate attention by the media. It was printed
in magazines and newspapers around the world as well as featured in
television and radio shows. Soon thereafter Martin was inundated with
emails of positive response from those affected by the storm and many
who were not. He was also contacted by groups working on the New
Orleans rebuilding effort, FEMA, and Florida’s Division of Emergency
Management.
What was required, he soon discovered, was a means of manufacturing. To
this end Martin contacted builders across the nation, including
premanufactured and modular housing companies, portable shed
fabricators, and independent contracting firms. After several false
starts, Martin was ultimately left without a means to bring his house to
the general public. “Manufacturers didn’t want to take a chance on
something so radically different from what they were currently producing
without a stack of orders in hand, and without a manufacturer and a
reliable time or cost estimate it was impossible to secure any orders.”
Faced with this seemingly insurmountable catch-22, Martin determined he
would either have to produce them himself or abandon the idea all
together. So, in 2006, he founded Mfinity, LLC, a product manufacturing
company. In early 2007, he relocated to southern Illinois and, with his
life savings and a line of credit, set up a 3,500 square foot production
facility on the property of his childhood home.
Realizing the logistics nightmare of providing emergency housing as a
startup company, Martin evolved the design of the HELP Home to fit the
commercial, non-emergency market. After redesigning the house from the
ground up, he renamed it the microHOME. Creating derivative designs as
well, including a shed and studio version, he also rethought the way in
which the home would be delivered and set up on site.
The average American home is roughly 2,200 square feet yet the microHOME
is less than a 100 square feet. A mix between a small house, a ship’s
cabin, and a travel trailer, it comes standard with a kitchenette,
including a sink, stove, refrigerator and storage, as well as a private
bathroom with a pass-thru shower and composting toilet. There are also
a multitude of interior options and porch styles to choose from allowing
the homeowner to personalize their own dwelling. With just a single 8
foot by 12 foot unit the microHOME can provide all the daily needs of
three occupants.
With the first production unit built and installed on site for tours,
Martin hopes to expand the list of items offered by Mfinity to include a
wide range of architectural and furniture systems. “There is a need for
well-designed, modern products that can adapt to our changing
lifestyles. I want to help fill this need.”
Carib Daniel Martin, principal of Architecture Design And Production
Tectonics (ADAPT), is a licensed architect and certified by the National
Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). Described by the
Washington Post as “eloquent protests against the global status quo,”
Carib’s work has been published internationally as well as displayed at
the National Building Museum in Washington, DC and the National Centre
of Craft and Design in Lincolnshire, UK.
