While it’s more than likely that if you’re living in a city, your place of residence closely resembles a shoebox, it seems hardly likely that if living in the sprawling countryside one would want one’s abode to be representative of any sort of container…that is, until now. The University of Colorado Boulder sure can churn out some cool looking Architecture projects — from the same institution that brought you Trailerwrap comes this project from Rob Pyatt, who received a special recognition award for architecture for this research+design+build project in association with the University of Colorado Boulder from the YAAG back in 2006. “They’re boxy but they’re good” might’ve been a slogan for Volvo in the 1990 Dudley Moore film Crazy People, but it more than applies here to Pyatt’s remodeling of this 900 square foot home built in 1948 which he remodeled in order to “explore the adaptive reuse and recycling of existing housing stock in Boulder, Colorado”.

–Evan Kessler

We wrote about Trailerwrap last year when the project started by the University of Colorado at Boulder College of Architecture was still just in infancy– lots of drawing and sketches. Slightly less than a year later, the project is complete. The group of students involved and a few dedicated treachers really pulled this one together with attention to detail– taking a defunct trailer and turning it into high design. Check out their Flickr account for more shots, and if you’re in the Boulder, CO area pop by for the open house on September 21st. Congrats Adam!

While it is not statistically likely that you — a loyal JoshSpear.com reader — live in a trailer, these abodes serve an important role in our society. With ever-increasing wage and wealth disparities in our economy, many American families look to the mass-produced mobile home as an affordable and convenient place to live. Unfortunately, a trailer park stigma exists due to the consensus that these things are horrendous looking and could be blown over in a second by the ‘big bad wolf.’ Thanks to Trailer Wrap — a project initiated by the University of Colorado at Boulder College of Architecture and Planning — the trailer park stigma may begin to subside. The idea behind Trailer Wrap is to provide simple and affordable solutions to improve the condition of mobile home–addressing lack of comfort, inefficiency, and poor aesthetics. Trailer Wrap comes in the form of a simple, affordable kit that can be assembled easily by just a few people. Thanks to hard work by students, dedicated faculty, and help from a wealth of sponsors, Trailer Wrap continues to build steam to become a widely implemented concept. Thanks to Boulder-based architect and buddy Brian Nelson for a heads up on this one.