FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Architecture professor Gregory Herman discusses the creation of a custom-designed $60,000 home with hardwood floors, built-in storage and a deck in the new book Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism. Herman’s chapter, “Market Modular,” explores how he and 15 students made low-cost, high-design housing in Fayetteville a reality thanks to an innovative partnership with Taylor Made Homes, a modular home company formerly based in Anderson, Mo.

“Modular housing is an underutilized type, but it has great potential,” Herman, associate professor of architecture at the University of Arkansas, said, “because theoretically at least, you can fast track it.”

Expanding Architecture is the latest in a series of books – Good Deeds, Good Design and Design Like You Give a Damn, to name but two – that document a new generation of designers committed to improving the lives of many rather than a select few.

The school-bus yellow, $60,000 modular home, built in 2003, features an innovative form and custom features and finishes designed by School of Architecture students.

“Design as activism has taken on a life of its own,” said Herman, “and it’s going far afield.” Initiatives in Expanding Architecture range from community planning in Croatia to designing church pew prototypes for post-Katrina New Orleans, but the focus continues to be on a primary human need: “It’s housing, housing, housing,” Herman said, flipping through the book.

It was a house, designed and built in 2001 with School of Architecture students and fellow professor Eva Kultermann, that kindled Herman’s interest in service learning: “We saw the good that it did, and got revved up,” Herman recalls. School of Architecture faculty and staff have designed and built four homes, providing much more than mere shelter for families of modest means.

“All of the houses have been sold once or twice each at significant profit,” Herman said. “We’re improving people’s lives through home ownership.”

Dean Jeff Shannon, for his part, is proud to have Herman and his students included in Expanding Architecture.

“It’s a who’s who of architects who are leading the way toward socially conscious practice, and we are proud to be part of that movement,” he said.  

Though Herman has no new design/build projects in development at the moment, he is looking for opportunities.

“Affordable, attainable housing is still the most important thing, and we still don’t have it here in Fayetteville,” he said.